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First published, 1922
Malabar Edition, March 1954
PRINTED «IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
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853
CONTENTS
THE CAT THAT LIVED AT THE RITZ 9
MR. R08IE AND MAY 40
THE LIFE OF LOUISE MILBROOK 62
THE LIFE OF ZENOBIA WHITE 68
THE LIFE OF VIRCIE WINTERS 75
THE URN 91
A BAVARIAN IDYLL IO 3
NIGEL 129
JUSTICE 163
THE LETTER OF A ROMANTIC 185
AUNT MILLY CROSSES THE BAR 197
LET’S GO TO HINKY-DINr’s 20 J
THE APOTHECARY 234
To
ALICE DAMROSCH PENNINGTON
I am indebted
for the title of thi* book
TO
BLOOMSBURY
THE CAT
THAT LIVED AT THE RITZ
I
W hen I knew her she was an old, old woman
with a face that was lined, white and trans-
parent. There seemed to be a kind of illumination
behind the thin high cheek-bones, but it must have
been a purely material illumination, for there was
never anything spiritual about Miss Wannop. She
was dry as an old-bone.
All her life she took the most exquisite care of her
skin. Her toilette frequently took as; long as two
hours, and even as a very old woman she treated
herself as if she had been a great beauty whose duty
it was to guard the treasure God had given into her
care. Yet she was not a beauty and never could have
been, even in her youth. Her nose was too thin, her
temples too pinched and hf r* mouth too small and
narrow. She did have the look of what one expects
a lady to be and she took pride in that look of breed-
ing and in the end it helped her more than all her
money to deceive people and so to gain those things
which she valued to the exclusion of friendship, of
blood relationship, even of human warmth.
9
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
j
All these things I learned after her death, from
the woman who for eleven years was her maid and
who is now the wife of my maitre d’ hotel. With this
woman Miss Wannop has remained a kind of ob-
session. She would rather discuss Miss Wannop than
talk of any other subject on heaven or earth.
The odd thing was how Miss Wannop came by
that queer, pinched, ladylike look, for one grand-
father had been a butcher in Brooklyn and the other
a ship’s chandler on the wharves of West Street. It
was the butcher who, having embarked late in life
upon a wholesale trade in meat, laid the foundations
of the great fortune which in the end was put to such
strange uses by Miss Wannop.
I met her through a creature called the Marquis
de Vestiglione. He is a shabby, threadbare little
man, whose only claim to celebrity lay in the fact
that he had once been the husband of a famous
beauty of the Seventies in Paris. The lady married
him because she needed a cocu who would provide a
certain screen of resectability in return for the
notice that came to him as the consort of so notorious
a character. The fact rather explains the gentleman.
He was the kind of weak man which enjoys being seen
in the company of well-advertised strumpets. He
lived upon money given his wife by her lovers, and
when she died he dropped out of the world, com-
io
THE CAT THAT LIVED AT THE RITZ
pletely forgotten, a penniless and cuckold nonentity.
He had many rather shady ways of finding
money to feed and lodge himself, and one of them
was to go about the country picking up bits of old
furniture which later he sold to shops or, through the
medium of one or two ancient acquaintances of his
late wife, to rich Americans. My father collected
porcelaine de Saxe and so he came to know the Mar-
quis de Vestiglione. It was after my father’s death
that I received a note from him written in a mincing
and servile style with all the flourish of hand-
writing that was genteel and elegant in the Seventies.
He wrote that a friend of his, a certain Miss Savina
Wannop (an American lady who had lived so long in
Paris that she was really French) had an interest in
porcelaine de Saxe and had heard of nay father’s col-
lection. She was very rich, he added, and in case
I cared to dispose of the collection, I would be able
to sell it to her at an excellent price.
‘I believe,’ jhe continued, ‘that I am the person
to aid you, as I have had some experience as a con-
noisseur of these things [he carefully avoided using
the obvious term ‘dealer’] and would know the true
value of your collection. Tfie commission ’could, of
course, be arranged later.
‘Miss Wannop,’ he wrote, ‘knowing your position
in the world, is eager that this should not be simply
ii
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
a commercial affair. Having lived so long among us,
she understands the delicacies of such a transaction
between people of our class. Therefore, if you are
interested, she asks if you would care to join us at the
Ritz for tea on Thursday, so that she may be pre-
sented. She lives at the Ritz. 1 will be waiting for
you in the hall on the Place Venddme side at five.
The affectation of the note amused me as well as
certain of its observations, especially the one con-
cerning the delicacy of transactions between people
of our class, because in affairs of business there is no
class in France. When it comes to buying or selling
something, duchesses and concierges in France are
exactly the same.
And it struck me as odd that I had never en-
countered a lady who had lived so long in Paris and
who was so rich and had so great a respect for the
amenities of the best society. My mother was Ameri-
can and in my youth we had many Americans in the
house. The name of Miss Wannop, did, however,
have a faintly familiar ring, and its sense of familiarity
grew more tormenting as the day of the tea ap-
proached. It would not leave me in peace and I
found myself repeating 'in the night, ‘Miss Wannop,
Miss Savina Wannop, Miss Wannop . . .’ And
then suddenly in the middle of the night I knew why
I knew the name but not the lady. It was one of
12
THE CAT THAT LIVED AT THE RITZ
those names which appeared regularly in social
colnmns of the Paris Herald.
While my mother was alive the columns had been
a source of amusement to us. Day after day there
had always appeared the same list of names. Their
bearers appeared to live always in a round of mad
gaiety. To judge from the columns of the Herald ,
these same people went from one entertainment to
another, sometimes to as many as four teas or recep-
tions or charity bazaars in a single day. We knew all
the names, yet we knew none of the people. It was
a strange world made up of my mother’s country
people and French people like the Marquis de
Vestiglione. It was a world that seemed to exist in a
vacuum, and each individual in it appeared to have
what you would call a press agentL They were
always present at paid entertainment!.
One of the names had been that df Miss Savina
Wannop. We remembered it because it was such
an odd name. I could not recollect having seen
it lately, but since my mqfKer died I had given up
reading the column. The next morning I picked up
the Herald, and there miraculously I found it at once.
* Among those present at th'e usually brilliant enter-
tainment and ball given laft night at the Ritz for the
Benefit of the Russian Orphans in the Crimea were
the Marquis de Vestiglione and Miss Savina Wannop *
»3
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
The old man, dad in a shabby cutaway and soiled
yellow gloves, met me just inside the revolving-
doors. He was all bows, smiles and servility, for he
was a toady who existed only in relation to people
whom he considered important. Alone in his own
room I cannot think of him as existing at all. In
this case I fancy he was impressed by the name and
family of my French father and the wealth of my
American mother. And he was nervous about the
bargain over the porcelain e.
He rubbed together dry and wrinkled old hands
slightly dirty about the nails, and commented upon
the January cold. ‘Miss Wannop is waiting for us,*
he added. ‘I am sure you will find her a charming
person.*
It was midwinter and most of the tables were filled.
They were all there - American millionaires, demi-
mondaines, decayed grand dukes and cousins of
dethroned royalty, Gerpian buyers speaking bad
English in the hope that they would be mistaken for
Americans, English titles, Argentine cattle kings,
Italian ‘princes* who vtere blackmailers, American
college girls seeing life, actresses, Spanish dukes, de-
cayed and once famous beauties. Following my
shabby Marquis through the mob, I picked out an
THE CAT THAT LIVED AT THE RITZ
old lady sitting alone by a pillar who I was certain
must be Miss Wannop. She was large and heavy,
with a red wig, huge diamond ear-rings, and a large,
badly painted mouth.
‘This,’ I told myself, ‘must be Miss Wannop.
This is what American women of her generation
turn into when they have, as my friend says, lived
among us for so long.’
I made ready to bow and seat myself, but we
passed the diamonds and the red wig without a sign
of recognition. A second later Vestiglione halted
abruptly before an old lady whom I should never
have noticed. Bowing, he said, ‘This is Mees
Wannop. May I present the Prince de S .’
He said it in English, but she replied at once in the
most exquisite and flawless French.’ ‘There is no
need to speak English. I know French well. I am
almost French myself. I have lived among you so
long.’
She wasn’t at all the Miss Wannop I had ex-
pected. She wasn’t at all ljjcl most American women
of my mother’s generation who, married to French-
men and Italians, have withered away and turned
bitter, or dyed their hair and taken lovers, or formed
a despairing interest in art’or music or charity. And
she wasn’t, of course, like the young American
women of our day, glittering, handsome and self-
15
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
assured. She was a little old lady of the greatest
gentility, not in the rakish, enlightened sense of the
eighteenth century, but . . . well . . . rather Louis
Philippe, dowdy and a little manque. That ever-
recurrent expression, ‘I have lived among you so
long,’ was the key. Here, 1 thought, was an American
who had accomplished what so many Americans of
Miss Wannop’s day had attempted without success.
She had fled an America which she found hard and
vulgar for a France that she saw through a senti-
mental haze, overlooking all its footless aristocracy
and the heavy coarseness of its bourgeois Third Re-
public. And she had actually transformed herself
into a Frenchwoman. All her friends, I divined,
must be French. Vestiglione was simply a chance
acquaintance picked up in a business arrangement.
In appearance she seemed exactly like my French
grandmother.
She was small and thin and dressed in purple and
black, and wore on her Angers amethysts and dia-
monds in heavy old-fstslponed gold kttings. As I
approached she had let fall the piece of petit point on
which she had been working with the air of a duchess
who mus$ re-cover her did chairs with her own hands
because it was the tradition in her family.
I said to her, ‘Of course, I speak English well
enough. My mother was an American.'
. 16
THE CAT THAT LIVED AT THE RITZ
Her gentle smile said, ‘Need you tell that to one
who has lived among you so long ?’ And her lean,
small aristocratic voice said, ‘Yes, I know all about
that. I once served on the same charity board as
your grandmother. The French one, I mean, of
course. The old Princesse. I have not lived in
America for forty years/
Again it occurred to me that it was strange I had
never heard of her save in the newspapers and then
only in a world which neither my mother nor
myself could believe really existed.
*1 suppose you would find it greatly changed if
you went back now.*
‘Oh, I shall never go now. Pve been away too
long. Why, I’ve even lost all trace Of my own re-
lations, all except a cousin who turns up now and
then. She married a Frenchman . . . .’ Her voice fell
almost to a whisper, as if she were about to mention
a disgrace. ‘It was, of course, only a Bonapartist
title . . . the Prince de Blzancourt.*
I murmured that I ha<k the honour of knowing
the Princesse, her cousin. A delightful and amusing
woman.
‘But it is not the same,* she said, in a voice which
with my eyes shut I could have sworn was my
grandmother’s. But my grandmother was, of course,
a Frenchwoman, whose father had died on a scaffold
17
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
in the eighteenth century, and she was much nearer
to Napoleon. You could understand why my grand-
mother childishly looked upon him as an upstart.
‘My cousin Emma,’ she continued, ‘never adapted
herself to the ways of her new country. She made
no effort/ And the thin small mouth closed in an
unpleasant line of disapproval.
‘But she was happy,’ I said. ‘It was one of the few
happy marriages of that sort. Her husband adored
her, to the very end. It is a kind of legend that he
was one faithful French husband in history. She
kept him amused and all his friends too.’
I kept seeing her, Cousin Emma, the Princesse de
B&zancourt, as different as day and night from this
quiet, exquisite old lady. Even as an old woman
Emma de B&ancourt in a red wig had the fire and
the wit to draw young men about her.
But the cold, pleasant, refined voice was saying,
‘But it is not the same. B^zancourt himself was the
grandson of a blacksmith. And my Cousin Emma
owed a duty to her nevfr country.’
They were the very words I had heard my grand-
mother use about Emma de Bezancourt - how long
ago ? Thirty years perhaps. Only because Emma de
Bezancourt had been alivd and human and colourful.
‘But she made her husband and her children very
happy.’
- 18
THE CAT THAT LIVED AT THE RITZ
She did not appear to think this argument worth
an answer, and Vestiglione, who had been waiting
a chance to talk of the days when France was still a
country fit for a gentleman to live in, launched him-
self upon a long-winded account of a visit made to
the Chateau de Bezancourt in the days when he had
been the cuckold husband of the Beauty. Miss
Wannop appeared not to listen, as if such a world
could hold no interest to one who had the Royalist
cause at heart. Once, in the middle of the account,
he winked at me and murmured, ‘Miss Wannop
doesn’t care for that set.’ It was an insolent and
vulgar wink. I was aware that he wasn’t toadying
now to Miss Wannop, but to me. The old lady, I
think, was a little childish and failed to notice.
When he had finished, Miss Wannop picked up
the thread of conversation as if the unfortunate
Bonapartist interlude had never occurred. Finally
we came round to the delicate business of the
porcelain e de Saxe. She had, she said, long known of
my father’s famous collectjpA. She was a collector
herself. She had had a house in the Rue de l’Uni-
versit£, but she had given it up during the war be-
cause it was so difficult to keep servants. Since then
she had lived at the Ritz and all her things had been
kept in storage. She failed to speak of money, or of
price, or to suggest that I would take less than the
x 9
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
asking price. It was the first time she seemed differ-
ent from my grandmother. My grandmother would
have haggled over every sou.
The Marquis, devouring cakes and sandwiches
with the air of a man who had not lunched, talked
a great deal of the beauty and value of the collec-
tion, all of course with his commission in view. I
asked her to lunch on the following Monday to in-
spect the collection and she accepted at once, almost
with an air of eagerness.
And at the same moment 1 saw the immense
woman with the red wig and the diamond ear-rings
moving toward us.
‘Ah,’ said Miss Wannop, smiling faintly. ‘It is
Olivia. You must know her already, Monsieur de
S . She is a charming woman, don’t you think ?
And one of the most ardent of Blacks.’
I had to admit that I did not know the Duchess,
but in the next moment I was presented. At the
mention of my name the evil old face t of the Duch-
ess lighted up as if som%one had turned on a light
behind the badly painted mask. ‘Ah, of course,’ she
said, seating herself heavily on one of the gilt chairs.
‘I knew .your grandmother in Italy ... the old
Princesse. We were on fhe same committee to aid
the orphans of people who died there of the plague.*
The notorious charitable activities of my devout
20
THE CAT THAT LIVED AT THE RITZ
grandmother had, I thought suddenly, brought her
some strange acquaintances. The most noticeable
fact about the Duchess was, I think, her need of a
thorough bath. The rouge and powder on her
massive face had been put on, layer after layer, until
it had caked. The great shelf of a bosom bore evi-
dence that she was an untidy eater.
Then I noticed that she had not spoken to Vestigli-
one and that he had turned his chair a little away
from her. Something about the strange trio made
me suddenly uneasy. It was a feeling difficult to put
into words, but I felt that I must escape the de-
pression that was settling over me and that I could
only escape it by escaping these people. I rose and
kissed the hands of both ladies, the white, immacu-
late, beautifully kept hand of Miss Wannop, covered
with diamonds and amethysts in old-fashioned gold
settings, and the fat greasy one of the Duchess with
greedy eyes.
Vestiglione pose quickly too, but he only kissed the
hand of Miss Wannop. And then an odd thing hap-
pened. I saw a look of horror come into the china-
blue eyes of Miss Wannop. I heard her scream,
‘That horrid beast !’ and I saw her faint dead away.
At the sound of her scream, others turned from the
tables all about us and out from under the table
itself ran a great white cat. It scurried through the
21
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
crowd and disappeared into the corridor that led
towards the Rue Cambon.
In a wild confusion we got her upstairs amid cries
from the Duchess of ‘Ma chere Savine ! C’est inoul i
C’est incroyable ! A laisser vivre cette sale b£te.’
Miss Wannop had a bedroom and a salon over-
looking the garden and both were filled with por-
celaine de Saxe arranged coldly in horrible cabinets
and vitrines in the style of Louis Philippe. What
she could possibly want with more of the stuff, I did
not know. Among it moved her maid, a big, florid
woman called Amelie. It was she who succeeded in
restoring Miss Wannop to consciousness. I left the
old lady to the tender care of the Duchess, but
Vestiglione remained glued to my side. I soon dis-
covered the reason. He wanted a lift in my motor
to the door of the shabby hotel where he lived. I
suspect, too, that it gave him pleasure and a sense of
self-respect to have the world see him walking
through the corridors of the Ritz by the side of a
man who was rich, respectable and possessed of a
position.
In the* motor he kept on revealing his horrid little
character. It began when I asked who on earth was
the Duchess de Venterollo. The name haunted me
in the same fashion as Miss Wannop’s had done.
22
THE CAT THAT LIVED AT THE RITZ
‘She is,’ he said, ‘a nobody, one of those countless
cheap Italian titles. She’s a vulgar old woman who
lives off Miss Wannop.’
‘But,’ I said, ‘she seems to be covered with
diamonds.’
‘They are all paste. She even got those out of Miss
Wannop.’ He sighed. ‘She is too good-hearted, too
trusting and too generous.’
It occurred to me that if it had been the Duchess
to whom I had given a lift, she would have been
saying the same things of little Vestiglione. These
two ruins, these harpies, were living off the naive
old lady. And yet she wasn’t naive, because she was
much too hard. She must have been a little stupid.
She could have done better than these two.
Hoping to draw him into deeper water, I said,
‘Miss Wannop does not seem the sort tp be imposed
upon.’
He slipped away by repeating, ‘She is much too
kind, much too kind.’ This, I knew, was nonsense.
Whatever virtues Miss \^ahnop may have had,
kindness was not among them. Talking to her was
like talking to a marble pillar. There was no warmth
or resiliency. She was flat, cdld, metallic. .
I mentioned the incident? of the cat.
‘She has a horror of cats,’ he said. ‘She can fed
it when one is in the room with her. That white cat
23
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
has lived at the Ritz for fears ... on the Rue
Cambon side, in the grill.’
I told him that I knew the cat well and was even
fond of it. ‘But it must annoy her continually,’
I observed.
‘Oh, she never goes to the Rue Cambon side.
It’s partly on account of the cat, but more, I think,
on account of the people one sen there. You see,
they offend her.’
‘It is much more lively and amusing than that
den of decayed wrecks where we had tea to-day.*
He did not wince. ‘Yes, but you see, she belongs
to another day and another world. And then the bar
is always filled with Americans, and she has lived
among us so long. . . .’
I could not endure the remark again. ‘She ought
to know,’ I said, ‘that young France is trying to be
as American as possible.’
‘But it’s not the same thing. Your mother didn’t
belong to the noisy vulgar mob. She was like . .
like Miss Wannop.’ * •
The remark made me angry and gave me my first
due to my real feeling about the old lady. She sud-
denly seemed to me, in spite of all her airs and refine-
ments, the most vulgar tfoman I had ever known.
*My mother was certainly not like Miss Wannop.’
Terhaps not. . . .’ he said smoothly.
H
THE CAT THAT LIVED AT THE RITZ
‘But the cat. If she feels like that about cats, I
can’t see why she stays on at the Ritz.’
‘She threatens to leave, but they know she never will.’
‘But why . . . she’s rich and free.*
‘She couldn’t bear living alone. At the Ritz she
sees her friends.’ After a moment he said, 'It’s an
odd thing about the cat. It never crosses over to the
Place Vendfime side unless she is there. It seems to
be fascinated by her.’
As the chauffeur opened the door for the bat-
tered Marquis to step down, the old man said, ‘Don’t
be afraid to ask a good price for the porcelaine.
Money is nothing to her when she’s impressed, and
you have impressed her.’
With this cryptic remark he vanished through the
garish yellow door of his hotel. ;
All the way home the name Ventercllo haunted
me, and then all at once I knew. It was one of the
names in the mysterious world of the Paris Herald.
At home I took up the paper again. Yes, she too had
been at the dinner for the, Crimean orphans along
with Miss Wannop and Vestiglione.
3 ,
On Monday, the day I was to entertain Vestig-
lione and Miss Wannop at lunch, I opened the
*5
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Herald to read, * Among those who entertained at the
unusually brilliant Sunday night at the Ritz was Miss
Savina Wannop, who had as her guests the Duchesse de
Venter olio, the Marquis de V estiglione and the Prince
Puri a tine*
So there was another ‘friend’ rescued from among
the hordes of stray Russians. I imagined Miss Wannop
surrounded by three hungry ruins instead of two.
To my astonishment Miss Wannop appeared for
lunch accompanied by a maid, the same big Auver-
gnat known as Amalie. She was a capable servant,
no doubt, despite her independent, mocking black
eyes. It seemed to me a bit swanky that Miss
Wannop should be accompanied thus as if she were
a kind of royalty. Amelie was sent to the servants’
hall to lunch.
We ate in the green dining-room where Miss
Wannop admired the boiserie, the Coromandel
screen, the crystals -all the stuff collected by my
father with which I had no desire to part. I saw
that Vestiglione’s littfe»green eyes were appraising
the value of each piece and thinking how much he
might get in commissions on them from some rich
American who did not*haggle over prices.
I said, ‘I mean to fart with nothing but the
porcelaine. My mother left me plenty of money.
I am not poor.’
2 6
THE CAT THAT LIVED AT THE RITZ
Miss Wannop passed over the vulgar reference to
American money, as if she were ashamed of her own
wealth derived from sources of which I was at that
time ignorant. My dislike for her was growing. It
was not the cold contempt I felt for Vestiglione, but
something harsher than that which arose from a sight
of the patrician marble mask, the cold expressionless
blue eyes and the delicate blue-veined hands.
With a rather shameful impulse toward malice,
I expressed my sympathy over the affair of the cat.
At once she grew agitated. ‘Let’s not speak of it,*
she said. ‘The thought makes me ill.*
And then I discovered an obscure desire, rather
strange in me who is amiable by nature, to torment
her, a helpless old lady, old enough to bf my grand-
mother.
She spoke of the Rue Cambon side bf the Ritz.
‘Of course it’s all changed now. I can remember
when one saw only ladies and gentlemen. It’s almost
as bad everywhere.’ For a moment she put down her
fork. (She ate greedily, exposing fine, sharp little
white teeth.) ‘You know, Monsieur de S , I
have never cared for my own people ; even as a girl
I only felt at home with the real French.’ .
This I thought was a vefy old-fashioned remark.
It was like something out of Henry James; and
then it occurred to me that in her youth she must
*7
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
have been very like the wandering Americans who
strayed through his pages. I knew what she meant
by the real French - the sort that were Royalist and
black Roman Catholic, who consider baths and
central heating the height of vulgarity, and whose
conversation when it was not concerned with the
fantastic idea of placing some mental incompetent
upon an imaginary throne, was of turnips or their
rheumatism.
‘I find that my own people - that is, the ones who
were my people once - have no sensibilities.’
(This, I thought, was Henry James with a ven-
geance.)
After lunch we looked at the porcelaine. She
admired the pieces with a curious banal enthusiasm
though it seemed to me that she knew nothing
whatever about them -the dates, the lustre, the
marks - nothing that a person with so large a col-
lection and so enthusiastically expressed an interest
should have known. And one by one before we
reached them she asked Vestiglione to remove any
group which might contain a cat. As the subject
was extremely rare, there were only two.
'Keep those for yourself,’ she said. 'I will buy the
rest. I have no room fo'r them at the Ritz, but I’ll
have a man come and pack them for storage with my
other things.*
28
THE CAT THAT LIVED AT THE RITZ
‘But we haven’t discussed price !’ I protested.
‘I’ll trust you. I dislike discussing money. I’m
sure I can trust a de S .*
What could I do but shrug my shoulders i It
all seemed a bit silly.
Amalie was summoned from the servants* hall and
arrived looking doubly robust and high coloured.
On leaving, Miss Wannop said, ‘To bind the bargain
you must dine with me on Sunday night.’
My first impulse was to refuse, and then I felt a
desire to know more of her, to get to the end of the
story if there was any end. She fascinated me as cats
do. She went downstairs and disappeared into her
respectable, high-pitched, old-fashioned motor.
When she had gone Vestiglione proceeded to make
it known to me that we might ask her what we liked
for the porcelaine. ... I told him that | would have
in an expert to value the pieces and set a figure, and
I saw his greedy eyes darken with disappointment.
‘But why,’ ^ asked, ‘is she indifferent about the
price i No one is as rich as that.*
‘No,’ he replied, ‘but she is getting old and she* -
he hesitated - ‘and she is trying to get rid of her
money. She has no one to leave it to. Sheds alone
in the world.’
‘But why should she want to give it to me -a
stranger f For that’s what it amounts to.’
*9
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Again he hesitated. ‘Well, she is a royalist, yon
see. She wants to help those of the old regime.’
This made me want to laugh, but I merely said,
‘But I'm rich already. It can’t help me. And I am
not idiot enough to be a sincere royalist.'
‘It’s not altogether that, perhaps.’ He looked at
me slyly. ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t understand . . .
but she’d like to have you dine with her at the Ritz.’
4
On Sunday night the other guests were the
Duchess, Vestiglione and a Russian Prince who
drank far too much and seemed not quite bright.
He was called Prince Puriatine. It was a nightmare
of boredom, with the Russian drinking himself into
utter stupidity and the Duchess and Vestiglione
hating each other and competing for the favours of
Miss Wannop. The lady herself seemed not to notice
the squalid air of the party, but sat looking about
her at the other tables. She peered through lorgnettes
with an expression which was unmistakably that of
satisfaction. The other tables were scarcely better
than oiir own. There were a great many ruins like
Miss Wannop’s friends, interspersed among tre-
mendously fat women in pince-nez and yards of
passementerie, who wore rather the same expression
30
THE CAT THAT LIVED AT THE RITZ
of satisfaction as bloomed upon the delicate cheek
of Miss Wannop. They were certain that at last
they were moving in the great world of Europe.
There were titles, too, on every side. I am certain
of it. There were all the titles my mother had
laughed at so many times, for here at last was the
heart of that lost world which we had never believed
existed.
In the morning I read in the Herald, 1 Among
those who entertained at the unusually brilliant dinner
at the Ritz was Miss Savina Wannop, who had as
her guests the Prince de S , the Duchesse de
Venterollo, the Marquis de Vestiglione and the Prince
Puriatine. . . .’
I felt somehow that I had been publicly soiled.
5
Miss Wannop kindly invited me on two other
occasions to an ‘unusually brilliant dinner’ at the
Ritz, but I did not accept. hJeVertheless I suffered,
for my name appeared as usual in the columns of the
Herald as one of Miss Wannop’s guests. It then
occurred to me that some mysterious agency sup-
plied the Herald columns with its list of guests and
sometimes supplied it too well in advance.
The porcelaine was packed and sent to storage.
3 1
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
1 discovered that Veatiglione had tried to sell the
collection to her at a price far above that named by
the expert, and after a row I rid myself of him for-
ever. And with the business completed, I drew a
veil over my ‘friendship’ with Miss Wannop, un-
aware that 1 was doing what hundreds of others had
done before me. 1 did not like her, and she was a
bore. And she still seemed to me, for no reason which
I could name, the most vulgar person 1 had ever
known.
But the affair was not over. One day three
months later Henri, my maitre d’hdtel, came to me
to announce that he planned to be married. Would
I have any objections i
*No,* I said, none whatever so long as it did not
interfere with his work. I congratulated him. Who
was the lady 1
Henri shifted uneasily for a moment. ‘Her name
is Am&ie. Perhaps you remember her, sir i The
maid who came to lunch with the old lady from the
Ritz.’
‘Of course. But she seems quite a handful. I sup-
pose she’ll be staying on with Miss Wannop ?’
Again Henri shifted his feet. ‘Why, no, sir.
That was just it. I wondered if you couldn’t find
her a place here in the house ?’
1 thought for a moment. ‘1 suppose I could find
32
THE CAT THAT LIVED AT THE RITZ
her a place. But you see, Henri, I don't want to
feel that I'm stealing Miss Wannop’s maid from her.*
‘You wouldn’t be, sir. Amilie plans to leave,
anyway.'
‘But she’s been with Miss Wannop a long time.*
‘Seven years. And she still gives satisfaction, sir.
It’s Amalie who is breaking off. She says she's spent
as much of her life as she means to with a ... a
. . . monster was the word Amalie used, sir.’
‘Miss Wannop a monster ! Why, she’s a very nice
old lady.’
‘Sometimes, sir, people seem different to their
servants . . . more real, I mean. Amalie says she’d
go mad if she stayed any longer with Mis# Wannop.’
‘Why has she stayed so long ?’
‘Well, you see, sir, it’s a good place, as money goes.
Am41ie gets three times the wages of a lady’s maid,
just to stay with Miss Wannop. It seems she can’t
get a servant to stay otherwise. She must be a pretty
terrible old lady for Amalie to give up all that money.’
A shadow of humour coloured his voice. ‘Amelie’s
an Auvergnat, too, and you know how they feel
about money.’
‘And what does Miss Wannop do that > makes
Amalie want to leave her ?’ *
‘I can’t quite make out, sir. It’s just that she is
. . . well, Amalie says she’s not a human being,’
33
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
The answer did not make sense, but there seemed
to be nothing gained by questioning.
Til think it over. Perhaps I can make a place for
Amalie.’
Two days later, before I had given Henri an
answer, Amelie herself called me by telephone. She
was, she explained in a shaken voice, sorry to trouble
me, but Miss Wannop had died suddenly during the
night and she did not know what to do. She had
called Miss Wannop’s friends, but to no good.
‘What friends ?’ I asked.
The voice of the big Auvergnat came back to me,
a voice rich with scorn. ‘Madame la Duchesse,
Monsieur le Marquis, Monsieur le Prince.’ Neither
the Duchess nor Vestiglione would come, and the
Prince Puriatine was too drunk to make sense.
Surely, I argued, there must be other friends who
knew Miss Wannop better than I did.
‘No,’ said Amelie. ‘She had no other friends.’ So
I ageed to come at once.
6
Am&Lie, excited an'd tearful, was standing in the
middle of the salon fHled with forcelaine de Saxe.
She was dressed to g c out and had her bags by her
side.
34
THE CAT THAT LIVED AT THE RITZ
‘Surely,’ I said, ‘you don’t mean to leave the
moment Miss Wannop dies.’
There was no arguing with her. Amalie meant to
go, without delay. ‘It was like her to die on the day
I was to be married,’ she said bitterly. ‘I’ll be late,
as it is.’
I mentioned loyalty. ‘Loyalty !’ screamed Amalie.
‘Why should I be loyal ? She tormented me for
seven years.’
I asked how, but she could only scream, ‘In a
million ways. She was a monster ! It was like living
with one of the dead.’
She could not say what it was poor Miss Wannop
had done, but she burst forth into a life: history of
the old woman. ‘You want to know whfit she was
like ? Well, she never had a friend . . . Uever since
I knew her . . . but harpies like Madame la Duch-
esse and Monsieur le Marquis. She used to buy
things, furniture and pictures and porcelain, from
people like you, respectable people of position,
just to get acquainted with* them. But it never
lasted. They saw her once or twice and that
was die end. You were just ljke the others. The
people she might have known were neve/ good
enough for her. Why, she had to close her house
because nobody would come to it and she
couldn’t get any servants to stay.’ Amflie began
35
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
to weep. *011, sir, you don’t know what I’ve put
up with.*
I didn’t know, and it seemed impossible to dis-
cover.
Amllie seized her bags and rushed from the room
to marry Henri and carry on life. I was left alone.
There was a faint noise in the adjoining bedroom and
I discovered that with Miss Wannop was an under-
taker with a blue-black beard. He was making her
ready for her final rest.
I began poking about the room, looking for some
due to a will or the address of her lawyers, for any-
thing, I must say, which would take from my
shoulders the responsibility for this old lady whom
I disliked so coldly. Presently 1 found the address
of her lawyers. And I found also a pile of heavy
boob, expensively bound in red morocco and gold.
I opened one of them. It was not an ordinary book,
but one filled with pages of blank paper on which
press cuttings had been pasted. There they were,
page after page of than, many of them yellow with
age, some of them clippings from the columns of
Mondanitis in French journals, some of them, the
recent ones, from the columns of the Daily Mail
printed in the days ‘since the Harmsworths dis-
covered that Americans, too, meant circulation.
*Among those who entertained at the unusually
36
THE CAT THAT LIVED AT THE RITZ
brilliant Sunday evening at the Ritz was Miss
Savina Wannop, etc., etc.* Going back through
them one discovered all the names which had once
given my mother many a laugh - the names of the
world which she said did not exist. It was like a
directory to some shabby niche in Hell filled with
the ghosts of bankrupt grand dukes, bogus princes,
broken-down opera singers, fake counts, swindling
duchesses. This, then, had been the world of Miss
Wannop. These boob were the story of her life.
She had lived for these boob and now she was dead,
alone, having captured only the ghosts of ruin and
decay.
The voice of the undertaker interriipted my
thoughts. He stood in the doorway stubbing his
hands. 'If you wish to look at Mademoiselle, she
is ready.*
I went, because it seemed only decent that some-
one should care enough to look at her just once before
the coffin was closed, someone who wai not a serv-
ant, an undertaker or a hoteh manager.
She was dressed in the black and purple dress in
which I had first seen her, but .the jewels were miss-
ing. Feeling my responsibility, I asked the •under-
taker what had become of them.
'I have them,’ he said. 'A woman came and tried
to take them, but I know the law and I refused to
37
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
let her have them. She said she was Miss Wannop’s
aster.’
‘Sister !’ I said. But she had no sister.’ A sus-
picion rose swiftly. ‘What did the woman look like 1’
He described her - a large woman, he said, with
diamond ear-rings and many diamonds on her fin-
gers. Her hair, he thought - well, perhaps nature
had never produced so vivid a red. And she was,
he thought, perhaps an untidy eater. She was very
fat and much painted.
I asked him to leave me alone for a moment, and
then I knelt to pray by the old woman whose
‘friend’ had tried to rob her as she lay dead. When
1 had finished I stood for a long time looking down
at the old face. In death it was more than ever
like marble, more delicate and aristocratic and more
than ever vacant of all emotion, of all passion, of
all character. It was empty and in its peculiar
emptiness there was a kind of horror and repulsion.
I could understand a little what Amalie had not
been able to put intb jvords.
And # then suddenly I became aware that I was
being watched by someone or something, and that
the curtain at the ‘window was moving ever so
slightly. Looking down, I saw a soiled white paw
emerge, and a moment later I was looking into a
pair of empty china-blue eyes faintly rimmed with
38
THE CAT THAT LIVED AT THE RITZ
pink. For a moment I experienced a wild sensation
of horror and madness, for I was looking into the
living eyes of Miss Savina Wannop. Then I knew
suddenly and was relieved. It was the Cat that
lived at the Ritz. He had found her out at the
very end, when she could no longer scream or faint
or escape. But the eyes were the eyes of Miss Savina
Wannop. Suddenly I understood. I knew that my
prayer for her soul had been useless, because Miss
Wannop had never had any soul. She was exactly
like the cat of which she had such a horror.
Driving the animal before me, I closed the door
on the last of those who had lived among ua so
long that they were really French. The cat scurried
down the stairs, and from the well arose the sound
of American voices and the tinkle of ice in American
cocktail glasses. Something more than Miss Savina
Wannop lay dead in the room next to thf porcelaine
de Saxe.
39
MR. ROSIE AND MAY
‘ T T ave another/ said Sadie. ‘This time it’s furni-
X 1 ture polish.’
Mr. Wigglesworth hung his derby on the vase of
imitation Sevres that stood on the mantelpiece,
lighted a cigar, and held out his glass.
Tou surtenly are a strong silent man,’ said Sadie.
‘You’re three ahead of me.’
Mr. Wigglesworth looked at her and then raised
his glass and drank. ‘Here’s to Mr. Rosie and May.
One more bastard less !’
Sadie began to weep. She drank and began to
comb her hair. ‘It ain’t him I’m thinkin’ about.
It’s her. Poor Rosie. Taking it hard when Gawd
removes a thing like him from you. I suppose it
was his droppin’ off sudden shocked her. He wasn’t
no good, but I suppose a husband’s a husband. It’s
a kind of principle. *You get used to havin’ a
husband around, even a thing like Clarence.’
M*. Wigglesworth, looked at her wearily. ‘Well,
he’s dcird now !’
Sadie stopped combing her hair. ‘Yes, thank
Gawd ! She can save some money now.'
A long silence followed her remark. Mr. Wig-
40
MR. ROSIE AND MAY
gksworth regarded himself in the mirror. Pre-
sently he said, ‘I thought this was goin* to be a
party.’
*Well, you gotta show some respeck. You can’t
jazz it up with his ashes right in the same house
with yuh. You gotta pretend for Rosie’s sake. It
ain’t decent not to. I was brought up right. You
gotta show some respeck.’
Mr. Wigglesworth, who publicly was a salesman
of spare parts for radios, walked over to the absent
Rosie’s radio. He turned a dial. There was a gut-
tural explosion, a splutter, and then Rosie Latouche’s
hotel suite was filled with the blare and uproar of
saxophones, trombones, and kettledrums.,
Sadie got up. ‘Shut off that Goddam thing 1
Ain’t you got any respeck ?’ ;
Mr. Wigglesworth turned to see Sadie, taking an-
other. With a twist of the wrist he filled the room
with new sounds that were deep, mellow, and rum-
bling. The grand organ of the Palladium, the
world’s largest motion pictiyS palace, poured into
Rosie’s flat.
‘Ease it down,’ said Sadie. ‘I ain’t deef.*
Mr. Wigglesworth eased it down. .
‘That’s the news reel,’ said Sadie. ‘Rosie comes
on right after that.’ She applied thick, greasy rouge
to her lips, creating a skilful and delicate Cupid’s
4 *
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
bow which bore no relation to the over-ripe mouth
given her by nature.
Mr. Wigglesworth turned a gloomy back upon
her and stood staring down into Forty-ninth Street.
It was a wet night. On the corner the colossal
electric sign of the Palladium Motion Picture Palace
mirrored its extravagant red, green, and yellow
lights in the wet asphalt.
‘This cremation business is good stuff,' said Sadie.
‘I’m all for sanitation, and it’s better havin’ his ashes
round than his corpse. Why, there ain’t even room
for a corpse in this flat. Where’d they put a corpse ?
I ask you V She took another drink. ‘And it ain’t
so depressin’. Yuh don’t feel the same way about
ashes.’
Across the street in the doorway of the Hotel
Barcelona, three men stood with their collars turned
up and their hats pulled down watching the passers-
by. An old woman went by, drenched by the rain
but holding her newspapers under her shawl to keep
them dry. A taxickt) skidded into the curb and
bounced off again.
‘It’s a funny thing - his wantin’ to be cremated.'
Mr. .Wigglesworth' had nothing to say to this.
‘And wantin’ his ashes strewn on the bosom of
the East River.’
Mr. Wigglesworth answered without turning.
4 *
MR. ROSIE AND MAY
‘Mebbe he hoped some of ’em would be washed up
on the Island* where he’d feel home-like.’
‘Well, he’s dead now.’
Across the street a man and a woman came out
of the door of Marco’s Independent Vaudeville.
They turned and went into Tony’s speak-easy.
Around his cigar, Mr. Wigglesworth remarked,
‘Margery’s act’s over. I just seen her and Herman
goin’ into Tony’s place.’
‘Mebbe we’d better ask ’em in. It’d cheer Rosie
up mebbe to see some friends.’
‘What about respeck f’
‘She ain’t seen Margery since she made the movie
houses and Margery got into the three a day. It’ll give
both of ’em somethin’ to high hat each other about.’
‘Margery’ll be tellin* all about her newj act.’
‘It ain’t so hot. Variety said if she’d thougnt it
up when she was thirty years younger it rsighta gone
big.’
Mr. Wigglesworth turned a # little from his post
at the window. Sadie was* taking another. She
seemed more cheerful. Beside him the radio sud-
denly became a voice, rich, b a rit:cme, and elocu-
tional. It was announcing a number entitled ‘My
Hot Steppin ’ Baby ain't no slow steppin' maybe !
He’s always on the job. ’
# The “Island** is Welfare Island, a local New York prison.
43
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
‘That’s her number,* said Sadie : Tier’s and May’s.
She’s goin’ on now.’
Mr. Wigglesworth again remained silent and ab-
sorbed in the view of Forty-ninth Street.
‘Poor kid,’ said Sadie. ‘It’s kinda like dancin' on
her husband’s grave. Havin' to go on with her
husban’ barely in his coffin.’
‘He ain’t in a coffin,* observed Mr. Wigglesworth.
Well, in whatever you call it ... a container.
That’s what art is. You don’t know, Eddie, what
it is to be an artiste.’
Mr. Wigglesworth grunted. *1 thought it was
all settled that he was a bum.’
Sadie began to repeat herself. Well, a husban's
a husban’. And a husban’s ashes are a husban’s
ashes. You gotta show some respeck.’
*Yeah,’ said Mr. Wigglesworth. He turned and
took one look at Sadie and one at the bottle.
‘What about another ?’ asked Sadie. ‘It’s a wet
night.’
Mr. Wigglesworth did not deny this. He took
another and returned to the window. On the radio
the blare of the Grand Symphony Orchestra of the
Palladium Theatre took the place of the grand
Cathedral Organ. Against the sound ran the thread
of Rosie’s high, shrill voice, singing, *, My Red Hot
Baby ain't no small time maybe' and the sound of
44
MR. ROSIE AND MAY
the Latouche Sisters’ feet pattering against the
rhythm.
'Dancin’ on her husban’s coffin,’ repeated Sadie
gloomily.
'She’s off the beat,’ observed Mr. Wiggles-
worth.
‘Whatta yon know about beats ?’
Without turning, Mr. Wigglesworth said, 'Are
yuh lookin’ for a fight ?’
'No.’
'If you wanna fight, I’ll stage a big one. I’m
just feelin’ right.’
'What does a common bootlegger like you know
about Rosie’s art ?’
‘I know when a common hoofer’s off the beat.’
'I suppose you wanna beat me up again.’
Mr. Wigglesworth did not answer. He was lis-
tening intently. So Sadie said once more and with
a slightly greater challenge in her voice } 'I suppose
you wanna beat me up again.’ Still Mr. Wiggles-
worth was silent. • *
'I wanna tell you, if you ever beat me up again
I’ll haul you up for it.’
Mr. Wigglesworth was listening with an intense
concentration.
'There’s sumpin’ the matter with Rosie,’ said he.
‘She can’t keep on the key.’
45
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
‘Poor kid !’ said Sadie. ‘Dancin’ on her husban’s
coffin !’
‘It ain’t a coffin,’ persisted Mr. Wigglesworth,
and then after a moment’s careful listening, ‘She
don’t sound so melancholy. She sounds tight to me.’
Sadie ignored this. ‘My Red Hot Baby ’ came to an
end. There was a pause and a thin scatter of applause.
‘It’s a flop,’ said Mr. Wigglesworth. ‘She’s
queered it.’
From a series of wet crackles came the familiar
elocutionary baritone. *You have just heard the
Latouche Sisters, “Rosie and May,” singing “My
Red Hot Baby ain’t no small time maybe ” broadcasted
by '
‘That guy sure has sex appeal in his voice,’ ob-
served Sadie.
‘Yeah f’ said Mr. Wigglesworth. ‘Well, it ain’t
the voice that matters.’
The voice continued : ‘ - by Station LMNO,
Nussbaum’s Department Store, by special arrange-
ment direct from the ,stage of the World’s Largest
Motion Picture Palace, the Palladium Theatre, now
showing “A Girl’s Man” with Almerita Tancred
and Alonzo Vaness. Please stand by.’
‘Aw, shut up !’ said Mr. Wigglesworth, and
throttled the beautiful voice with a deft turn of
the wrist.
MR. ROSIE AND MAY
‘I never thought you was jealous of a voice.*
Outside, the rain fell in ropes and spirals. Through
it emerged from the door of Tony’s place two
drenched and unsteady figures. Mr. Wigglesworth
pushed open the window, took the cigar out of
his mouth, and yelled, ‘Hey, Margy, come on up !
We’re celebratin’ !’
For a moment two faces turned up, searching the
windows of the Eldorado Hotel, and then the two
forms crossed the street to the entrance just beneath
the window which framed the lean, tubercular form
of Mr. Wigglesworth. It took them some time to cross,
as they seemed unable to maintain a straight course.
‘What d’you mean, celebratin’ ?’ asked Sadie.
‘That ain’t the word to use at a time like this.’
‘Well, if we ain’t celebratin’, what are ive doin’ ?’
Sadie took up the bottle. ‘Have another. It’s
a wet night.’
They each had another, Mr. Wigglesworth re-
turned to the window and Sadie said, ‘Rosie ain’t
even got a container yet.’
‘What d’you mean - container ?’
*A what you may call it ? A urn - for his ashes. She
ain’t had time, what with rehearsals and a new act
gob’ on. They asted her to call the Funeral Chapel
and s’lect one, but she ain’t had time. She ara’t
had time.’
47
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
*What’s the matter with the thing he's already
in - that thing on the mantel V Mr. Wigglesworth
went over to the yellow oak mantel and took np
a circular metal box painted black. ‘If she's gonna
throw him in the East River what's the use of
havin’ a urn ?' He peered at the metal box and
shook it gently, listening with concentration. Then
he looked at Sadie, ‘It certainly is convenient.
He don’t take up much space now.’
‘It’s gotta be impressive,’ said Sadie. ‘She can't
pour the ashes outova common tin can like that.
It’d look like she was emptyin’ her combin’ box in
the East River, if there was such a thing as a combin’
box. A girl can’t do that. She’s gotta have a bronze
urn so she can hold it in her hand when the Press
guy clicks his box. You know -“Famous Dancer
Scatters Ashes of Beloved Husban’ upon Bosom of
East River.” It’s gotta be impressive. It’s gotta
be impressive. I keep tellin’ her, “Rosie, it’s gotta
be impressive.” ’
With an exaggerated care, Mr. Wigglesworth re-
placed the black tin box on the mantelpiece.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Rosie otta at least get some
publicity outa that cokey.’
The door opened. It was Margery and her hus-
band. Margery grasped the end of the upright
piano for support (she was a large peroxide), and
48
MR. ROSIE AND MAY
then cried out, Well, for cryin’ out loud, if it ain’t
Sadie Beimeister !’
‘Guess again ; it’s Amy McFeerson,’ said Sadie.
‘I ain’t seen you since we played Skowhegan Falls.
What you been doin’ with yourself ?*
She encircled Sadie in a pair of fat arms and gave
her a large wet kiss.
‘I’m at leisure,’ said Sadie, giving a hard look
towards Mr. Wigglesworth. ‘Anyway, that’s what
they call it.’
Mr. Wigglesworth did not notice her.
Margery’s husband was introduced to Sadie. The
wet night had depressed him. He hovered like a
shadow behind Margery.
‘Whatya celebratin’ ?’ asked Margery^
‘Ain’t you heard ?’ said Sadie.
‘No.’
‘Rosie Latouche’s husban’s dead.’
‘No. When?’
‘Day before yesterday.’
Tears came into Margery’s* china-blue eyes. ‘No,
you don’t mean it ! Him ? Mr. Rosie and May.
She’ll miss him. I say she otta thank Gawd. If
ever a husban’ was a drag on a woman’s career !’
Her head cleared a little and her thoughts became
concrete. ‘Where is he ? Laid out at Hedy’s
place ?’
49
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
‘Naw, he’s right here.*
Margery looked alarmed. ‘Where ?*
Sadie pointed to the black box on the mantelpiece.
‘That’s him.’
‘Creewwyted ?’
‘Creewrfyted.’
Margery took up the tin box gently and shook
it a little, listening sadly with her fuzzy blonde
head on one side. Then in silence she put it down
with great caution, but she placed it too near the
edge of the mantel and it fell. She caught it skil-
fully and when she had regained her own balance
put it down a second time with greater care and
greater success. ‘So it’s a wake you’re havin’ ?’
‘Yeah. Awake.’
‘I ain’t never been to a wake with the remains
in ashes.’
Mr. Wigglesworth was opening the window.
‘Come on up, Al, we’re celebratin’ !’ he called.
Sadie yelled at him. ‘Whatya doin’ ? Askin’ in
every bum you see ?’ ' •
Margery’s husband was drawn to the radio as a
piece of iron to a magnet. He lacked Mr. Wiggles-
worth’s skill of manipulation, and it began to shriek
and groan and crackle. '
Sadie held up the bottle. ‘How about a fresh-
ener i It’s a wet night.’ She addressed the room
50
MR. ROSIE AND MAY
in a voice which steadily grew louder. Margery
came over to the table and Margery’s husband got
a toothbrush mug out of the bathroom. Sadie filled
the two receptacles. Mr. Wigglesworth, with a
few nonchalant spins of several dials, filled the room
with the sound of the Babylon Hotel Roof jazz
band playing ‘What’s my Baby waitin’ for to-
night ?’ Margery threw her hat on the floor and
ran her fat, beringed fingers through her peroxide
curls.
‘It’s awful how these tight hats make you sweat !’
The door opened and A1 oozed in, dripping rain
across the carpet. He hung his wet Fedora on
top of Mr. Wigglesworth’s damp derby, and Mar-
gery shouted, ‘Well, for cryin’ out loud* if it ain’t
A1 !’ She gave him a large wet kiss, add addressed
the room, ‘A1 and me ain’t seen each; other since
he closed his trained seal act in Troy, jit’s a regler
reunion, this is.’
Margery’s husband was turning dials on the radio
and producing grumbles, rpars, and shrieks. ‘Lots
of static to-night,’ said Margery amiably.
‘Have a drink, Al,’ said Sadie. ‘It's a wet night.’
He had a drink, and Margery said, ‘It’s, a wake,
Al . . . a real old-fashioned wake. It’s Rosie’s hus-
band. That’s him, over there on the mantel.’
Al looked uneasy and took a large drink. Mr.
51
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Wigglesworth was opening the window again. ‘Hey,
Gertie ! Come on up and bring yer boy friend !
We’re holdin’ a celebration !’ He closed the window
again.
‘Yer radio seems to need oilin’,’ observed Al.
Mr. Wigglesworth quietly throttled it once more.
Sadie said, ‘Say, Margery, how’s the new act ?’
Mr. Wigglesworth turned and looked at her, hard.
‘Ain’t you seen it yet ?’ asked Margery. ‘Oh,
you seen it, Al. When i’
‘To-night.’
‘To-night ! It wasn’t so good to-night. You
otta seen it Tuesday.’ She started pulling her dress
down over her fat shoulders, ‘Yuh see, it’s like this.
I come on all dressed in a creation covered with
sequins. Shows off the figure fine. I gottan old-
fashioned figure and I’m proud of it. See ? I’m
proud of it. Get that ?’
‘Yeah,’ said Al. ‘You gottan old-fashioned figure
and you’re proud of it.’
‘And it goes big with the hicks. Well, it’s like
this. I come on all in sequins and with a big pink
hat and carryin’ a handorgan and attached to the
handorgan by a string is Herman over there, all
dressed up like a monkey. And he walks along the
orchestra pit and climbs into the boxes pretending
to collect nickels.’
52
MR. ROSIE AND MAY
‘I’ll bet he gets ’em sometimes, too,’ said Al.
Margery ignored him. ( And then he runs up to
the piana and sits at it and pretends he’s a real
monkey and can’t play a note and makes discords.
That part goes big. An’ then I give him a banana
and he begins and I sing. Yeh heard my new song ?’
‘Sure,’ said Al. ‘I just got through hearin’ it,
didn’t I ?’
‘Herman wrote it. It’s called “Rose s are now but
a memory .” It’s a waltz song. Yeh. Waltys are
cornin’ in again. Lookit “Ramona.” This jazz
stuff can’t last. Herman ! Herman i Let that
radio alone and come an’ play my accomp’niment.
Herman is just nuts on radios.’
Herman came over and after striking a few false
notes found himself and began to play. Margery
laid her bosom on the top of the piaho and sang
in a loud soprano voice.
‘Have another,’ said Sadie to Al. !< You’ll need
it after this.’
»
The door opened and Gertie and her boy friend
came in. Sadie poured the drinks and they all sat
on the stuffed sofa. While Margery sang, Sadie ex-
plained about Rosie’s husband and all.
*Ro-osesz are naoto but a memaree /’ sang Margery.
t Ro-o-osesz that meyun but good-by ee P Nobody paid
any attention to her.
S3
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Mr. Wigglesworth still looked out of the grimy
window. Across the street against the lighted door-
way of the Hotel Barcelona moved the •figure of a
woman who seemed not quite sure of her destination.
She wore a long black veil and was without an
umbrella. The veil hung in a wet rope down her
thin back. She leaned against the rail of Tony’s
place and looked about her. Mr. Wigglesworth
opened the window and shouted, ‘Hey, Rosie ! This
is where yeh live !’ He closed the window again.
‘Ro-o-osesz are naow but a memaree P sang Mar-
gery. She was sweating hard. The song came to
an end in a little flock of trills executed with great
concentration by Herman.
‘Have another,’ said Sadie. ‘This time it’s var-
nish !*
Gertie’s boy friend snored and A1 pushed himself
in between him and Gertie.
Margery was talking again. ‘And then Herman,
see, climbs on top of the piana and - this part goes
big. He pretends he’s hunting for a flea. He climbs
on toppa the piana. . . . Climb on toppa the piana,
Herman.’
Hernfan was back at the radio again. It began
to squawk.
‘It’s a rotten act,’ said Sadie confidentially to Al.
‘Before I quit the two a day . . .*
54
MR. ROSIE AND MAY
‘Yeah, I know,’ said Al. ‘It ain’t what it used to
be.’
And then the door opened and the widow stag-
gered in. She clung for a moment to the door-knob
and wrung the water out of the end of her crape veil.
Sadie noticed her first. ‘Hello, Rosie. Where’s
May ?’
‘I ain’t seen her since the show.’
‘Whatsa matter ?’ asked Al. ‘I wanna see her.’
Margery put her arms about Rosie and gave her
a wet kiss. ‘Rosie, dearie, I just heard and thought
I’d drop in,’
Rosie looked at her. ‘Heard what ?’
‘About him,’ said Margery. ‘About poor Clar-
ence.’
‘Oh, him ,’ said Rosie, and threw herihat on the
floor.
Mr. Wigglesworth turned from his post at the
window. ‘You’d better shut the door, Rosie, if you
don’t wanna get thrown outa the Eldorado.’
Rosie slammed the door., ‘May, the slut, said I
was tight to-night ; she said I queered the act.’
‘It’s a lie,’ said Sadie. ‘She’s a dirty liar.’
‘I never seen a soberer woman,’ said Al. .
‘I gotta right to get drunk if I wanna. Ain’t I ?’
‘Sure you have, dearie,’ said Margery.
‘I gotta right to celebrate.’
55
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
'With her husband dead at home, it’s like
dancin’ on his coffin,’ said Sadie.
‘It ain’t a coffin,’ said Mr. Wigglesworth.
Herman guided the radio into the Middelbottom
Chain Grocery Stores Stringed Quartet in an hour
of Classical Music. Again Mr. Wigglesworth said,
‘Aw, shut up !’ and throttled the thing. Margery’s
husband gave him a hurt but cunning look.
‘Have a drink, dearie,’ said Sadie to Rosie.
‘That’s what yuh need on a night like this. Just
one drink’ll do a lot for yuh.’
Margery was saying, ‘And then Herman gets up
on the piana. Remember, he’s dressed like a mon-
key all the time and I’m in sequins with a big pink
hat. Well, Herman gets up on the piana - and this
part goes big. Herman, get up on the piana like
you do in the act.’
Herman got up on the piano, knocking down a
photograph of the late Mr. Rosie and May. It lay
forgotten on the floor.
‘They’ve delivered hipi,’ whispered Sadie to Rosie.
‘Who ?’
‘Him, That’s him on the mantel.’
Rosie took a deep 'drink and a long look at the
box on the mantel. She said nothing.
‘I think we otta put him in the bathroom,’ said
Sadie. ‘It ain’t decent, havin’ him in here,’
56
MR. ROSIE AND MAY
Rosie grew reminiscent. ‘He was a great one for
parties. The more whoopee, the better. Let him
rest there till I finish my drink. He ain’t sufferin’
the way I am.’
‘They ast if you was cornin’ to-morra to choose a
container.’
‘What sa y ?’ asked Gertie, waking suddenly.
‘A container ... a urn, I mean. I say Rosie
otta get a container, I mean a urn. You gotta have
a urn, Rosie, for the ceremony. It’s gotta be im-
pressive. You know, headlines and pictures in the
Graphic , “Well-known Actress Scatters Ashes of
Dead Husband on Bosom of East River.” ’
‘Bosoms,’ said Al, ‘is outa fashion except with
Margery.'
‘You gotta do it right, Rosie, photographs and
a lotta publicity an’ everything. It’s gotta be im-
pressive.'
‘A urn,’ repeated Rosie dimly. ‘A urn.*
‘It’s gotta be impressive.'
Margery’s husband had got* back again to the
radio and the Middelbottom Chain Grocery’s
Stringed Quartet poured a Liebestraum unheeded
into Rosie's fiat.
‘How*d I sound on the radio 1’ asked Rosie.
Mr. Wigglesworth answered her without turning
from the window. ‘Rotten ! May was right.'
57
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Rosie looked at Sadie. ‘What’s he mean ?*
‘Never mind, dearie. Don’t mind him. Nothin’
suits him to-night. You was wonderful.*
Margery was saying, ‘An’ then Herman gets inside
the piana. Of course, Herman can’t show you. He
can’t get inside an upright piana . . .’
Suddenly Gertie addressed Rosie. *1 gottan idea.
I gottan idea.’
‘No,’ said Mr. Wigglesworth.
‘What about ?’ asked Sadie.
‘For a container ... a urn, I mean. What about
one of them vases for a urn ?’ She indicated the
imitation Sevfes vase adorned by the damp hats of
A1 and Mr. Wigglesworth. Rosie regarded it.
‘It’s artistic,’ said Sadie. ‘In a pitcher, it’d look
just like a urn.’
Rosie’s pink-nailed fingers began a slow, groping
movement in her short, mahogany hair.
Gertie asked, ‘Where’s the other one, Rosie ?
There used to be a pair of ’em.’
Rosie didn’t answer her. She appeared lost in
thought. The fingers came to rest on a spot on
the top of her head. Behind Rosie’s back, Sadie
began making signs to silence Gertie on the subject
of the missing vase/ Then Rosie finished her
drink, got up, and went over to the mantel,
where she carefully took down the black lac-
58
MR. ROSIE AND MAY
quered box and, holding it against her ear, shook
it gently.
‘Where yuh goin’ ?’ asked Sadie.
‘I’m gonna put him in the bathroom where it’s
quiet.*
‘Nobody’s got any respeck,’ said Sadie. ‘Nobody’s
got any respeck. Have another, Gertie. It’s a wet
night.*
Rosie disappeared into the bathroom and Gertie
turned to Sadie. ‘What’ve I done ? What you
makin* shush signs to me for ? I ain’t said any-
thing.’
‘You oughtn’t to have spoke of them vases. It
reminds her of poor Clarence. He broke the other
one throwin’ it at her. She’s gotta scat that long
on the top of her scalp.’ *
Rosie didn’t close the door of the bathroom and
a moment later there was a sound of rushing water.
Then, unsteadily but with an air of dignity, Rosie
reappeared in the doorway. She was bearing the
black lacquered box. The Jitl was off and it had
a fearful air of being empty.
‘Whatya been doin’, dearie ? ’ asked Sadie.
‘I’ve been layin’ Clarence to rest.’ She put the
canister down on top of the piano. Its awful empti-
ness reverberated as it struck the teakwood. ‘I put
him to rest all right, an’ he got his last wish. In a
59
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
minute or two he’ll be on the bosom of the East
River, all right.’
Mr. Wigglesworth turned from the window. ‘No,
he won’t.*
Sadie glared at him. ‘Why not ?*
‘Because I used to have a job in the sewage de-
partment.’
*What’s that got to do with it ?’
‘Well, the sewage from this part of town goes
into the North River.’ He turned again to regard
life in wet Forty-ninth Street.
Rosie began to cry. ‘And now he ain’t got his
last wish ! An’ it was the last thing he ast !’
Sadie drew her down to the sofa and began to
pat her arm. ‘Never you mind, dearie. It ain’t
true. Don’t you believe a word he says. What’s
he know about where sewage goes, a common boot-
legger like him ? Never mind the old killjoy, Rosie,
he’s been tryin’ to queer the party all evenin’.
Have another drink, dearie. That’s what yuh need
on a wet night like this. There now ! Don’t you
mind a killjoy like Eddie.’
Margery was saying, ‘And then for a encore, I
sing “ Roses are now but a memory ” and we do a quick
finish. Oh, no. I forgot. A little earlier in the
act Herman jumps from the piana to the chandelier.
You can do that here, Herman. That’s easy.
60
MR. ROSIE AND MAY
Show ’em how 7011 jump from the piana to the
chandelier.’
On the radio the beautiful elocutionary voice was
saying, ‘You have just listened to an hour of classical
music by the String Quartet of the Middel-
bottom Chain Grocery Stores. The Quartet gives
an hour of music every evening at ■’
There was a sudden crash, a sputter of light and
sparks, and the sound of breaking glass. Herman
had just jumped from the piano to the chandelier.
‘Please stand by,’ said a beautiful baritone voice.
Mr. Wigglesworth shifted a dial. ‘Aw, shut up 1 *
6l
THE LIFE OF LOUISE MILBROOK
‘V«> 8 he was a wonderful daughter to him.
X She’ll always have that to think of, no matter
what happens.’
The old woman, dowdy and fat and swathed in
rusty crape that had witnessed a hundred funerals,
sat on the edge of the collapsible chair, peering
between black shoulders at a coffin covered feebly
with meagre carnations and tuberoses and autumn
flowers. Among these shone resplendently two or
three great bursts of roses sent by distant rich
relations from a Park Avenue florist. The thin
woman beside her wiped the red tip of her nose and
sniffed the heavy-scented air.
Tes,’ she said, ‘she need never reproach herself
for having neglected him. She gave up her life to
him.’
i
The fat woman said, "‘Have you noticed the sweet
expression it’s given her ? I tell you the lives of
people show in their faces. She looks like a saint.'
They knew, then, I thought, how she looked
when her face was not 'hidden by the horrible black
veil, for nothing was visible of Louise. Her head,
bowed a little as she sat beside her father’s coffin,
* 62 *
THE LIFE OF LOUISE MILBROOK
was completely obscured by thick black doth. I
wondered whether she herself could see through it
to discover me sitting there far at the back among
the old women who loved funerals.
‘Shhh!’ hissed the thin woman, and in the
cramped shabby flat where the sunlight never en-
tered, the fat little priest began. ... I am the
Resurrection and the Life , saith the Lord . . .
It was the shabby funeral of a man who had come
down in the world ; for what lay in the coffin now
had come into the world seventy years earlier rich
and well-born. We sat there - the mourners - a
strange assortment of remote and seedy cousins who
came out of the earth only when there was a funeral
in the family. They were immensely old and respect-
able men and women, worn down to pettiness by
poverty and obscurity, who rarely saw each Other save
at funerals where they spoke of dear Cousin Laura
and dear Cousin Kate. In their midst, and with a
vulgarity that emanated like a cloud from their
furs and broadcloths and pe;yft, cowered two rich
relatives who in the midst of a decaying family had
managed to keep their heads above water. They sat
here uneasily, as if the poverty of all the others
whom they pitied was in some way a reproach to
themselves. They were the ones who, as if to ease
their consciences, had sent the great bursts of
63
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
expensive roses that made the other flowers seem
only more shabby and pitiful.
And last of all there was myself, who had nothing
to do with any of the others, who was not even an
obscure cousin, but only a healthy, prosperous,
middle-aged man with a happy home and children,
who had come only because once long ago he had
been in love with Louise Milbrook.
For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yester-
day : seeing that is past as a watch in the night.
And now at last old Milbrook lay in his coffin
and a score of people had gathered to mourn him
on this dreary January day. Why ? He was a man
who had been kind to none, not even to his own
wife and children. He had wasted his money and
brought them to the aching poverty that must keep
up appearances. All of us, even the two crape-
laden women beside me, knew him as a monster of
selfishness. We had all watched him slipping down,
down, down, from one house to another, each
smaller than the last 1 , from one flat to another, each
shabbier than the last, until it had all come to an
end on the fringes of the fashionable, world, in a
street where crowds of urchins stood outside waiting
until John Milbrook <came down to take his last
ride. None of us, in the stuffy little room, had
loved him. Perhaps it was Louise whom we loved
THE LIFE OF LOUISE MILBROOK
and respected, sitting there, the last of her family,
her head bowed a little over her frail body. Perhaps
she had loved him, for she had stayed by him until
the end, watching, spoiling him, reading to him,
playing matador through endless evenings, gratifying
his slightest whim while together they slipped down,
down, down. . . .
O teach us to number our days : that we may apply
our hearts unto wisdom.
The priest was fat and oily like a white worm,
and he read in a bored, monotonous, mechanical
voice, hurrying as much as he dared. He was an
office boy of the church (they had not bothered to
send the rector, who had a fashionable funeral at
the same hour), but he was good enough; to bury
old Milbrook, who ten years ago had been forced
to give up his pew in fashionable St. Bart’s. Still,
it would look well in the papers . . . ‘The Reverend
So-and-So, curate of St. Bart’s.’ It would be the
last faint echo in the world from which the Mil-
brooks had fallen.
The sound of a funeral whisper at my side : ‘I hate
the smell of tuberoses.’ The two old women sniffed
the air. ‘They’re so sickening !'
Tuberoses ! It was the scent of tuberoses, thick
and heavy, drifting up from the terraced gardens of
Nice that enveloped us as we sat in the moonlight
7 65
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
- how long ago ? - more than twenty years, at least.
Louise, pale and lovely, in a lilac gown, who blushed
and clung to my hand while I talked to her.
Louise saying, ‘I do love you. Don’t think it’s
cause I don’t.’ And then weeping silently. ‘But
Father. . . . You see, he’s left alone so much since
Mother died, and he’s so helpless. I can’t leave him
just yet. I do love you, Robert. I do.’
So we had parted.
And again in Paris a long time afterward. ‘If
we could only wait a little time. Father is so
helpless and unhappy. Wait a little time !’
Wait ! Wait for what i For this. It was only
now, twenty years after, that John Milbrook’s
leathery, sodden old face lay still at last in his coffin.
Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God , in His
wise providence , to take out of this world the soul of
our deceased brother . . .
In His providence ! Perhaps it was just that. In
His providence, Almighty God had set her free.
She might be free ifojy. She might be happy. She
might marry. She might lift the veil of crape that
hid her frail beauty and look out upon a new world
in which she might begin at last to live !
The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Love
of God and the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with
us all for evermore. Amen.
66
THE LIFE OF LOUISE MILBROOK
They were shotting in old Milbrook until Judg-
ment Day, and in the shabby room laden with the
scent of tuberoses I rose to hurry away. I almost
ran, but somehow in the mazes of the narrow hall
I came suddenly full upon the one person I had
hoped to escape. She stood in the shadows, startled,
staring at me through the thick veil as if she had
not seen an old lover, married, middle-aged and
happy, but some terrifying ghost. Then she sighed,
* Thank you, Robert. It was good of you to remem-
ber us.’
Slowly she raised her veil to smile at me, wistfully.
The face was old and lined and worn like the face
of an old, old woman. There was the soft thud of
a coffin lid being closed in the dreary parlour. Into
the coffin they were shutting more than the body
of selfish old John Milbrook. They had Shut into
it something far more precious than all his existence.
The scent of the tuberoses hung thick In the air.
Behind me, the fat old lady, pushing for a better
view of the coffin, was telling someone else, ‘Yes,
she was a wonderful daughter to him. She can
always remember that, no matter what happens.*
67
THE LIFE OF ZENOBIA WHITE
Z enobia White is dead. This morning, as I
came down to breakfast, I saw running up the
lane from the highroad the breathless, dripping
Jabez Smith, who lives on the next farm. When he
saw me, he cried out, ‘Zenobia White is dead!’
And then he fell silent, embarrassed, speechless, as
if he understood at once how silly it was to be so
excited over the death of a queer old woman who
had lived for almost a century. I knew why he was
excited, though Jabez did not. He stood there,
freckled and awkward in the sun, waiting my
questions. ... He knew that this was exciting
news, but he did not know why it seemed so im-
portant or why he was so excited.
‘Zenobia White is dead !’
With the death of Zenobia White something had
gone out of our wotljJL . . . Who could say what
it was ? Something that had passed and gone for
ever.
She .had been dead for three days, said Jabez.
They only discovered* it after Zenobia’s dogs had
howled for hours on end until Jabez’s father had
gone to discover the cause of their howling. He
68
THE LIFE OF ZENOBIA WHITE
walked in through the thicket of lilacs and syringas
and locusts surrounding her house. ‘Even the
birds,* said Jabez, ‘were quiet.’ He walked through
the chickens and cats and mongrel dogs up to the
door and knocked ; but there was ho answer. He
went in, and there lay Zenobia, dressed in a wedding-
gown of white silk, with a wedding-veil over her
face. She was dead, and the stuff of the wedding-
dress was so old that it had turned yellow. It must
have been made seventy years before.
Thus something had gone out of our little world.
I should never see Zenobia White again walking
with her fantastic disordered dress of yellow taffeta
and black lace, trailing its long train in the dust of
the highway, a basket over one arm, her black lace
mits adjusted neatly . . . walking down the high-
way, very tall and straight and proud, her; black eyes
flashing beneath the little veil of black: lace that
hung from the brim of her queer, bedraggled
bonnet. . . . Zenobia White . . . immensely old,
more than a hundred, perhaps, who had lived,
as far back as any of us could remember, in a little
house covered with vines that, stood behind a great
barrier of bushes down by the covered bridge.
Zenobia White, immensely* fierce and old, who
dressed always in yellow taffeta like Sarah Bernhardt
in the picture painted by Carolus Duran.
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Zenobia White, who had never married, was dead
in her wedding-dress, a dress made seventy years
ago, before I was bom.
Jabez Smith, still puzzled, withdrew, and Zenobia
White took possession of me. As far back as my
father could remember, she had lived in the untidy
old house. Animals came to her without fear.
The very birds in her garden were tame. The
thrushes and the cardinals abounded. In the
cupola of her tiny house there were whole colonies
of martins. Stray dogs came to her . . . the stray
dogs, yellow and spotted, without name or breed,
who had howled on the morning when Zenobia had
not come out to feed them. And cats were there,
great numbers of cats who lived in peace with the
dogs and who followed her in a grotesque procession
a little distance down the road when she set out in
the morning in the trailing gown of yellow taffeta
to do her marketing. . . .
And the old white horse. For twenty years the
white horse had lived inside her fence, guarding
her. No one could enter the little white gate with-
out meeting the old white horse, his teeth bared
savagely. He had never known harness or bit in
twenty years. Only 'this morning, when Zenobia
lay dead in her wedding-dress, he had not attacked
Jabez’s father. He had stood sadly, waiting. . . .
70
THE LIFE OF ZENOBIA WHITE
Within my own memory and the memory of my
father, Zenobia White had always lived thus. To
get at the roots of things it was necessary to go
back, far back into the days of my grandfather.
He had known Zenobia White when she was a
beauty, tall and black-eyed, defiant and proud, who
sat a horse like an Amazon. But even in those days,
she had lived alone in the little cottage where her
father had died. The mother of Zenobia White
had been an Indian woman, an Iroquois princess,
who died soon after she was born, and at twenty
Zenobia was left an orphan.
In those days there were prowlers, and sometimes
an Indian running amuck murdered a settler and
his family, but Zenobia had stayed defiantly in her
little house by the mill, armed with heir father’s
pistols, scornful even of the talk which tame of a
young girl who had many admirers, li\4ng alone
and unprotected. ‘But Zenobia,’ my grandfather
had said, ‘could look out for herself.’ He knew,
perhaps, because he had been*among her admirers.
But he was not the favoured one. Zenobia loved
a young red-haired Scotch settler called Duncan
McLeod, who was a man with as quick a temper
as her own, a handsome man aftd the strongest runner
in all the county. Zenobia had loved him with all
the fierce passion of her nature. But their wild
71
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
passion had not a smooth course. They had gone
for a ride one night (so my grandfather said), and
when they returned, Zenobia, sitting her horse
proudly, rode a hundred paces ahead of him, for
they had quarrelled. And when they came to the
little house (where Zenobia lay dead now in her
wedding-dress) she turned in alone. They had
quarrelled, though it was but a day or two before
the wedding, and she told him she would never see
him again.
And then (my grandfather said) Zenobia had
gone in and, barring the doors and windows against
intruders and renegade Indians, she had taken down
her Bible to read for a time in order to chasten her
fierce, proud spirit. She sat reading thus in the
silent, lonely house until midnight. It is possible
to imagine the scene . . . a little house in a clearing
in the woods where the owls cried out mournfully
all through the night, and Zenobia alone there over
her Bible, praying that the Lord might chasten her
temper and bring her ^happiness. And then in the
midst of this, the sound, faint and uncertain, of
someone among the bjishes of the garden, the sound
of footsteps . . . the footsteps of one or perhaps
a dozen men, for in the blackness of the night and
with the sound of the river it was impossible to
tell. And . Zenobia rising slowly to pick up her
72
THE LIFE OF ZENOBIA WHITE
father’s pistol and go to the door and listen. Zenobia
patting out the single mutton candle. Still the
footsteps and the rustling . . . perhaps of the
rising wind among the bushes and the faint ghostly
hooting of the owls. And at length Zenobia,
raising her pistol, had fired through the door to
frighten the intruders. The sound of a shot and
then a silence while Zenobia stood there with the
smoking pistol in her hand waiting ... in the
silence. They had gone away. . . . There was
nothing but the sighing of the wind and the hoot
of the owls. . . .
And in the. morning (my grandfather said) she
had been wakened by the sun streaming in at the
window and the sound of the thrushes and cardinals
in the garden. She woke to look at her wedding-
dress, spread out on the chair near her bed. And
when she had dressed and gone downstairs, she
unbolted the doors and windows one by one until
she came to the last, which opened into the garden.
. . . And there on the paths ^ a c e downward, lay
Duncan McLeod, his red hair like flame in the sun
. . . dead with a bullet through his heart.
1 looked up and saw the figure of Jabez Smith,
sitting now under a catalpa tree. He had forgotten
that the hay was cut and there were clouds in the
73
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
west. I knew what he was doing. He was trying
to puzzle out why he had been excited because
Zenobia White was dead. I would never see Zenobia
White with her yellow taffeta trailing in the dust
and followed by her cats. Something had gone out
of our little world.
74
THE LIFE OF VERGIE WINTERS
I can see her now as she used to come down the
steps of her narrow house between the printer’s
office and the little shop of Rinehart, the German
cobbler - little rickety steps, never in too good
repair, especially as she grew older and the cost of
everything increased and that mysterious money of
hers seemed to go less and less far in the business of
meeting the necessities of life. It was a house but
one room wide, of wood and painted a dun colour,
the most ordinary and commonplace of houses which
a stranger in the town would not even have noticed ;
yet until yesterday, when they pulled it down, it was
a house invested with an incalculable glamour and
importance. It was a house of which no one spoke,
a house which the Town, in its passionate desire to
forget (which was really only a hypocrisy), raised
into such importance that one* thought of it when
one forgot the monuments which had been built
in the squares, parks, and cemeteries to the leading
citizens of the community, to the bankers, to the
merchants, to the politician* who had made it (as
people said with a curious and non-committal tone
which might have meant anything at all) ‘what it
75
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
is to-dajr.’ One remembered it even when one
forgot the shaft of granite raised in the public
square to remind the Town that John Shadwell
had been one of its leading citizens.
I can see her now-Vergie Winters -an old
woman past eighty, coming painfully down those
rickety steps, surrounded always by that wall of
solitude which made her appear to take no notice
of anyone in the world. Old Vergie Winters, whose
dark eyes, at eighty, carried a look of tranquil,
defiant victory. Vergie Winters, of whose house no
one spoke, whose door had been stoned by boys
too young to understand her story, who only sensed
dimly that she was the great pariah of the Town. Old
Vergie Winters went on and on, long after John
Shadwell was in his grave, refusing to give way,
living there on the main street of the Town as if
she were alone in the solitude of a desert. Some-
times she spoke to Rinehart the cobbler and some-
times to her neighbour on the other side, and of
course in the shops 'they were forced to sell her
things, though in one or two places they had even
turned her away ; and she had gone without a word,
never trying to force her way anywhere.
It all began almost a 'century ago, before the Civil
War, when one day Vergie Winters, tall and dark,
with great burning black eyes set in a cool pale
76
THE LIFE OF VERGIE WINTERS
face, opened the door of her father’s house to John
Sha dwell, tall and handsome and blond, the youngest,
the cleverest lawyer in the Town. It happened so
long ago that it seems now to have no more reality
than a legend, especially when one remembers
Vergie only as an immensely old woman coming
painfully down her narrow, crooked steps. But it
happened, it must have happened to have made of
Vergie Winters so great a character in all the com-
munity. It must have been the rare sort of love
which comes like a stroke of lightning.
He would have married Vergie Winters, they
said (the old ones who remembered the beginnings
of Vergie’s story and, before dying, passod it on to
their children and grandchildren), but fthere was
already a girl to whom John Shadwell was betrothed,
and in the background a powerful father,* and John
Shadwell’s career, which Vergie Winter*, being only
the daughter of a Bavarian immigrant farmer, could
do nothing to aid.
Long afterward, the Town* said, ‘Look at her !
You can see what a drag she would have been on
him, with her queer, silent ways. A pity, too, for
she was a beautiful girl.’ *
But they never thought, Of course, that if things
had been different, Vergie Winters might not have
been queer and silent ; and now, looking back, one
77
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
can see that they were quite wrong. It was not
Vergie Winters who was a drag on his career. It
was the other woman, John ShadwelTs wife, who
turned into a strange, whining, melancholy invalid
before they had been married a year. And what
could John Shadwell do ? Desert her ? It was not
possible. And, in the way of such invalids, she lived
for more than forty years, forty dreary years, com-
plaining, hypochondriac, nagging. She was alive
and still complaining when her husband, a great,
vigorous, handsome man who treated her patiently
and with gentlemanly respect, was dead under the
most shocking circumstances.
‘It was a pity about John Shadwell’s wife,’ people
said. ‘And she’s such a lady, too.’
And Vergie Winters. She did not break her heart.
She did not marry some stupid lout and give up her
life to a dull unhappiness. She did not wither away
into spinsterhood. She loved John Shadwell . . .
who knows how passionately, how deeply, in the pro-
found depths of her curious, remote soul ? She left
her parents (‘to set herself up in dressmaking and
millinery,’ so she said! and took a narrow, wooden
house on Main Street, where she put up a card in the
window and sold hats to the women of the Town.
And before two years had passed, it was to this nar-
row house that John Shadwell came, secretly -it
78
THE LIFE OF VERGIE WINTERS
must have been with an amazing secrecy -for no
one even suspected the visits for more than three
years. She made no effort to be more friendly with
people about her than was required by the simple
routine of her trade. She lived placidly, with a
strange, rich contentment, inside the walls of the
narrow little house. One met her sometimes, usually
after darkness had fallen, walking with her slow digni-
fied step along the streets of the Town. But she was
alone . . . always alone. (Who knows what a wealth
of contentment, what riches of devotion, lay in that
deep, impregnable silence ?)
Only once in all those sixty years was she ever
known to leave the house overnight and that was
three years after John Shadwell was married, when
she went away for a few months ‘to visit her aunt in
Camden.’ It was not long after she returned that
John Shadwell, ‘whose poor wife could never have
any children,* adopted a girl baby. Hi§ wife, it was
said, made no protest so longws the child had a good
nurse and did not worry her. She was ‘so miserable,
always ailing. She would give anything in the world
for the health some women had.’
•You couldn’t blame herf said the Town, ‘for
feeling like that. They say she never has a moment’s
good, wholesome sleep.*
79
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
John Shadwell went to the legislature, the young-
est man in the state to hold such an office. And when
the time for re-election came, the fight was bitter
and into it some enemy thrust the name of Vergie
Winters. So the story spread and so the name of
Vergie Winters went the way of most small town
milliners. Millinery was a ‘fast’ business and Vergie
Winters was a ‘fast’ woman. A committee called
upon her and asked her to leave the Town. And
John Shadwell did nothing. If he came to her de-
fence, he was ruined at the very beginning of that
precious career. So Vergie gave him up, but she did
not leave the Town. In the little parlour with the
hats in the window, she received the committee and
in that calm, aloof way, she told them that they
could not force her to leave. They could not prove
that she had broken any law. She was a free citizen.
She even looked at them, out of the depths of the
dark, candid eyes and lied.
‘John Shadwell,’ she said, ‘is nothing to me. If he
has come here once or twice, it is only because he is
my lawyer.’
She must protect John Shadwell.
And«so she sent them away baffled, even perhaps
a little intimidated . . a committee of red-faced,
self-righteous townsmen who had known, some of
them at least, women far worse than Vergie Winters.
80
THE LIFE OF VERGIE WINTERS
But her trade dwindled. Women no longer came
to her for hats, unless they were the shady ladies of
the streets who cared nothing for reputations which
had no existence. And Vergie Winters, perhaps
because she needed desperately their trade, perhaps
because it never occurred to her, in that terrible
solitude to which she had dedicated her life, ever to
judge them and turn them away, came to depend
upon them for companionship. They came and
sometimes they stayed to talk. A few of them were
run out of town, but new ones always took their
places, for in the Town, despite all its high morality
and the moral sermons hurled from its pulpits, there
seemed to be a need for such ladies. They always
went to Vergie Winters for their bonnets. ‘
‘She is such a lady. She has such a fine airj* they said,
and, ‘It’s so restful sitting there in her cool parlour.*
But their trade did her no good. ‘It Duly goes to
show,* said the Town.
Their coming was really the beginning of her
colossal solitude. She did not go away. She did not
flee from the threats that sometimes came to her.
She was sure of herself. She. would not surrender.
And she could wait. She effaced herself fromthe life
of John Shadwell, and when the Town began putting
two and two together, she was even forced to give
up walking through the twilight in the direction of
8i
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
John Shadwell’s house where, from the opposite side
of the street, she could watch with a furtive eye the
little girl who played on the lawn about the iron dogs
and deer beneath the elms. She never went out ex-
cept to buy the few things she needed to eat and for
her trade. It was about this time that a shop run by
a Presbyterian elder refused to sell her a spool of
thread with which to sew the bright roses on the hats
of the ladies of the streets. She did not make a scene ;
she did not even complain. She went quietly from
the shop and never again passed through its doors.
But there were always the gay ladies. They came
and went, but they were always there. They could
not live without money, yet they always had it,
though they toiled not nor spun, to pay Vergie
Winters for their hats. Some died ; one or two were
murdered in saloon brawls, but Vergie Winters never
turned them away. They were her only friends.
One wonders what secrets, what confidences, they
brought to Vergie Winters, sitting there in her
narrow little house. One wonders what dark history
of the Town’s citizens went into the grave when
Vergie Winters was carried down those narrow,
rickety *steps for the last time. But for all that she
knew, she said nothing.' She simply waited. Perhaps
it was a fear of what she knew, of those dark secrets
of a sort never inscribed on monuments to leading
82
THE LIFE OF VERGIE WINTERS
citizens, that saved Vergie Winters from worse than
ostracism. One can’t help thinking that somehow
the Town stood always a little in awe of Vergie
Winters and her quiet, dark solitude.
At last what she hoped -what she must have
known -would happen, came to pass. One cold
night while Vergie Winters sat sewing on the gay
hats, a key turned in the lock and John Shadwell
came back to her. He came in the face of scandal, or
ruin, of everything, because he could not help him-
self. It had begun in a flash of lightning when Vergie
Winters opened the door of her father’s house to let
him in, and now John Shadwell found that it went
on and on and on. . . . There was no stifling it.
Who can picture that return ? Who Cfn imagine
the sudden upleaping in the calm, withdrawn soul
of Vergie Winters, who had such faith ih this love
that she sacrificed all her life to it ?
And so for years, John Shadwell came, on the
occasions when he was nothin Washington, to see
Vergie Winters in the narrow wooden house. She
kept on with her precarious, trade, for she would
never while he lived accept any money from him.
Besides, she could not afford, for his sake, to arouse
suspicions. For herself it did not matter ; she could
not be worse off.
83
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Thus Vergie Winters and John Shadwell passed
into middle age and there came a time when he no
longer sought election, but instead became a power
behind the throne, a man who shaped the 'precious
careers’ of other men. He held power in the palm
of his big hand and no longer depended on votes.
He grew careless and one night he was seen by a
negro stable-boy turning his key in the back door of
Vergie Winter’s little wooden house with the bon-
nets in the window.
After that there were women who crossed the
street in order to avoid passing the window with the
gay bonnets, and children, hearing their parents
whisper as they drove by on a summer evening, came
to understand dimly that some evil monster lay
hidden behind the neat, fringed curtains. They
came to believe that the dun-coloured house con-
cealed some horrible unmentionable thing. Once,
while John Shadwell was away in Washington, boys
stoned the house and broke all the windows ; but
Vergie Winters said * nothing. In the morning a
Slovak glazier, who was new to the Town and had
never heard of its Scarlet Woman, came and repaired
the damage, and after he had gone she was seen com-
ing down the narrow steps in that terrible pool of
solitude as if nothing at all had happened. She had
her basket over her arm. She was going to buy
84
THE LIFE OF VERGIE WINTERS
vegetables for her noon meal. She was tall and proud
and indifferent. So far as anyone knew, she never
spoke of the affair to John Shadwell. She wanted to
spare him, it seemed, even such petty annoyances.
And then, as the years passed, she sometimes saw
from her window (the only safe spot from which she
might peep) the figure of John Shadwell’s adopted
daughter, grown now into a girl of twenty. She
must have watched her a thousand times, always in
company with John Shadwell’s sister, a large, bony
spinster, as the pair came out of the shop on the
comer and crossed the street so that a girl so young
and innocent might not have to pass the house of
Vergie Winters.
So she sat in the narrow, dun-coloured house,
working on at the gay bonnets, on the afternoon that
John Shadwell’s adopted daughter was married to a
son of the Presbyterian elder who refused to sell
Vergie Winters a spool of thread. Perhaps on that
afternoon she had a visit from one of the ladies of the
street, who sat talking to he» (she was snch a lady)
while the girl in the bridal-dress walked down the
aisle of the brick Presbyterian church, with no
mother sitting in the pew on the right because John
Shadwell’s wife had been too much upset by the
preparations for the wedding.
And one is certain that, late that night when the
85
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
festivities were ended, the figure of a middle-aged
man followed the shadows of the alley behind Vergie
Winters* house and let himself in with a ley he had
carried for more than twenty years. And one can
hear him telling Vergie Winters who was at the
wedding, and that there never was a prettier bride,
and what music they played, and what there was at
the wedding-breakfast, and assuring her, as he
touched her hand gently, that the bit of lace she had
given him had been used in the bridal-dress. He had
told them that he bought it himself.
Then, slowly, the Town came to accept the state
of affairs as a permanent scandal. One seldom spoke
of it any longer. One simply knew that Vergie
Winters and John Shadwell had been living together
for years. He was rich, he was important, he was a
power in politics, and now that his career no longer
mattered, he grew indifferent and a little defiant.
So far as John Shadwell was concerned, he was a
leading citizen nearly seventy years old, the grand-
father of children by his adopted daughter.
But with Vergie Winters ? She still went her
solitary way, making her few bonnets, grown a little
old-fashioned now and d£mod£ for all her conscien-
tious reading of the fashion papers. (One can see her,
slightly greyed, putting on her spectacles and peering
86
THE LIFE OF VERGIE WINTERS
closely at the pages.) And still, as she sat behind the
lace curtains at her window, she saw the figure of
John Shadwell’s daughter, remote and upright and a
little buxom, crossing the street and going down the
opposite side ; only instead of being led by John
Shadwell’s spinster sister, she was leading her own
children now. And night after night the figure of
John Shadwell, no longer an ardent lover, but an old
man, followed the shadows of the alley (less and less
furtively as he grew older) to turn the worn key in
the lock and sit there all through the evening with
Vergie Winters. What did they do ? What did they
say to each other in those long winter evenings now
that passion was only a shadow and a memory ?
And then one night John Shadwell’s wife, peevish
and fretful in her tight-closed bedroom smelling of
stale medicines, sent for him at midnight jto read to
her, only to be told that he had not come in. And
again at two o’clock, and again at three ; still he had
not come in. Even when the grey %ht filtered
through the elms on to the ireif dogs and deer, he had
not returned. They knew then that he would never
return, for he lay dead in Vergie Winters’ narrow,
dun-coloured house, behind the lace curtains and
the gay bonnets. He had belonged to her always, in
spite of anything they might do, and in that silent,
powerful way of hers, she had known it from the be-
87
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
ginning. In the end he came to Vergie Winters to
die. . . .
It made great trouble and embarrassment and
they were forced to wait until midnight of the
following day before they were able to take John
Shadwell’s body from the house of Vergie Winters.
And when they did take it, it went out of the same
door which had opened so many times at the touch
of the worn key, and along the shadows through
which he had passed in life so many times on the way
to the little house. But even then they were not
able to keep the affair secret. The Town came to
know it, and so shut out the last glimmer of tolerance
for Vergie Winters. It was no longer a half-secret.
It was a scandal which cast darkness upon the name
of one of the men who had made the Town (as
people said with a curious and non-committal tone
which might have meant anything at all) *what it
is to-day.’ The crime was Vergie Winters’. But she
could not have cared, very much. . . . Vergie
Winters, sitting there' in her terrible solitude behind
the lace curtains, while the procession passed her
house . . . first the band playing the Dead March
from Saul and then the cabs containing John Shad-
well’s daughter, her husband and John Shadwell's
grandchildren, and then one by one the cabs carrying
the leading citizens.
88
THE LIFE OF VERGIE WINTERS
The next morning she came down the steps as she
had always done, in the same clothes, with the same
air of abysmal indifference. She had not betrayed
him daring life, and in death she gave no sign. And
she must have known that on that morning every
eye she passed was turned upon her with a piercing
gaze ‘to see how she took it.’
For ten years longer, Vergie Winters lived in the
narrow wooden house, growing poorer and poorer
with the passing years. She saw the children of John
Shadwell’s adopted daughter grow into men and
women and marry and have children of their own.
But the scandal had grown stale now, though the
legend persisted, and only a few must have remem-
bered hazily that the old woman who sat behind the
curtains was a great-grandmother. Until one
morning the howling of the cat roused Rinehart, the
German cobbler, who broke into Vergie- Winters’
house and found her dead. And when they carried
her down the rickety steps ojj her last journey, she
went alone, without a band to play the Dead March
from Saul and without a procession of carriages to
follow her into that far corner of the cemetery (re-
mote from the fine burial grqund of the Shadwells)
where they laid her to rest.
Yesterday they pulled down Vergie Winters’
89
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
house. There is no monument to her memory, save
the tiny stone at the head of her grave, paid for with
the money saved out of what she earned by making
bonnets for the gay ladies of the Town. But Vergie
Winters is not dead. When one passes the gaping
hole where the little house once stood, one thinks of
Vergie Winters. When one passes the granite shaft
raised to John Shadwell, one thinks, not of John
Shadwell, but of Vergie Winters. When one sees a
Shadwell grandchild or a Shadwell great-grandchild,
one t hinks of Vergie Winters. For now that time
has begun a little to soften the Town, the memory of
Vergie Winters has been kept fresh and green with
a strange aroma of vague, indefinable romance.
When the names of those who crossed the street to
avoid her narrow house are forgotten, the name of
Vergie Winters will live. Why ? Who can say ?
Was it because the Town never knew a woman called
upon to show a faith so deep, a sacrifice so great, a
devotion so vast ?
I can see her still, an old woman of eighty, hob-
bling painfully down the rickety step of her house,
with that curious proud look upon her worn old
face, and in the sharp, old eyes. It was a look which
said, ‘Vergie Winters* was right. John Shadwell
belonged to her, in spite of anything they could do,
from the very beginning !’
9 ®
THE URN-AN ENTIRELY AMERICAN
STORY
I
I t was a splendid and ‘fashionable’ funeral, with
many members of the American colony (that is to
say, those whose names add a peculiar lustre to the
Social Column of the Paris Daily Herald) seated
about the room. The religious element was also well
represented: besides members of the more con-
ventional sects, there were present Theosophists and
Spiritualists, Buddhists and Yogis, New Thoughters,
and Christian Scientists, for Mrs. Wintpole had
always entertained an experimental attitude of
mind toward religions, and having, as she, observed,
‘a beautiful gift for friendship,’ she had picked up
many acquaintances on her way through conversions
to one or another of these seetS. So they had come
at her request to the funeral of her husband, most of
them perhaps a trifle curious to see the service which
she had planned herself, ‘as a sort of eclectic celebra-
tion of the mysteries of death.’ One or two of the
more rakish and cynical members of the funeral
audience held a secret belief that she had been wait-
9 *
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
ing impatiently for her husband to die in order that
she might try out this ‘eclectic service.’
As the funeral people said, ‘There was never such
a devoted wife before in the history of the world.
She gave up everything for him, especially in those
last years when he lingered so. She never left his
side. . . .'
One or two thought, ‘That woman is a monster.
. . . She devoured her husband slowly, bit by bit.
He never escaped from her for a moment. She gave
him no peace. . . .’
Even in death he had not escaped her. Imprisoned
in the urn that stood on the Louis Philippe table
were the ashes. To the very end she was using him
as an object on which to practise the terrible devo-
tion which led her to say, ‘People say that my
nature is almost too intense - it burns.*
She was the centre of interest. Dressed all in
white like a bride, she sat upon a low dais directly
before the urn that contained her husband’s ashes.
A wreath of tuberoses circled her hair just above
the pince-nez that embraced a thick, rather too
fleshy nose. The classical effect was somewhat
marred by the tiny gold chain which led from the
pince-nez to a patent gold spring that lay concealed
in a fleur-de-lis pin on her ample bosom. Other-
wise the contours were as Greek as could be hoped
92
THE URN
with a figure so full-bosomed and given to ample
curves. A spray of tuberoses lay across her plump
arms. During the ceremony her small blue eyes
were fixed upon space with the expression of one who
sees beyond the mists and confusion of this world.
Miss Hoskins, a gaunt, thin virgin, with prominent
eyes, who had gone somewhat cynically through
many conversions and tried almost as many faiths
as the Bereaved herself, read the service in the
overcrowded little salon of the house in the Rue
Spontini, to which Lydia Wimpole had brought her
husband after oil had been discovered in the back-
yard of their Arkansas home. The atmosphere was
heavy with the thick scent of flowers, and Miss
Hoskins, who was very nearsighted, read the service
(all in verse of Lydia Wimpole’s own making) halt-
ingly and without regard for the exquisite rhythms.
It was only at the moments when Miss Hoskins,
reading uncertainly, found herself with $n extra
syllable on her hands that the countenance of Lydia
Wimpole, sitting on the dais, dressed as the Bride of
the Hereafter, changed its serene expression. At
such times a dark and troubled, look of exasperation
crossed her countenance. She was an optimist. If
she had not been, she would long ago have abandoned
her religious adventures. When Miss Hoskins
stumbled badly over the more passionate passages of
93
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
the Song of Songs with which the Bereaved had
chosen to end the service, the face did not change
its expression. Mrs. Wimpole had not written the
Song of Songs. So it was of no importance to her
how it was read.
From time to time a discreet and admiring mur-
mur drifted up to the dais. She was certain of what
they were saying. . . . 'Doesn’t she look serene
and lovely. She has made of death a beautiful thing !’
Everyone forgot the small bronze urn, embossed
with the esoteric symbols of three religions. It
seemed less the centre, the reason for the occasion,
than simply another piece of bric-k-brac in a room
which already resembled a second-hand shop. In
death Horace Wimpole was obscured as he had been
in life.
2
The ashes were kept* there on the table during
the days of packing 'for the return to America.
They were surrounded always by a wreath of fresh
and sickly scented tuberoses. Callers who came to
bid her farewell found that there was a depressing
truth in her assertion that Horace was not really
dead at all : he was always with her there in the
house in the Rue Spontini.
94 -
THE URN
The plans for the burial occupied her mind a
great deal, and the faithful Miss Hoskins came in
daily to discuss the question. And at length it was
settled, in all its details.
She described it to a friend (a Mrs. Blanchard,
whose acquaintance she had made during her
studies in Spiritism).
*1 have thought it over,’ she said in a voice which
was known among her friends for its ‘sweetness.*
‘I have thought it over, and I feel that Horace ought
not to be buried on foreign soil. He will rest more
quietly in his own homestead in Arkansas. Near our
place there - the place where oil was discovered -
there is a mountain with a pointed rock at the top.
I propose to have the urn,* (she made onei of those
graceful gestures which she had learned at k class in
Greek poise, to include the object on the? marble-
topped table), ‘I propose to have the urn sealed in
that rock, following a little ceremony which I have
thought out.’ »
The ceremony, she said, woifld be conducted by
herself -the widow. ‘Oh,* she protested, wiping
away a brave tear, ‘I feel strong enough. It won’t
be too much for me. I’ll do it because I know that
it is what Horace would have liked.’
There were to be six virgins dressed all in white
who would do a dance symbolising the great ques-
95
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
tion - ‘O Death, where is thy sting ? O Grave, thy
victory ?’ She herself would sit a little to one side,
holding the urn, and on placing it in the rock, she
planned to read an ode of her own composition,
which began, ‘There is no death ; one only steps
across.*
She had written already to the Members of the
Sorosis Club of Poseleta, Arkansas, of which she was
still a member, inviting them to attend the cere-
mony.
On hearing the plan, the fat and cynical Mrs.
Throssington, whose somewhat abstract and tech-
nical mind Lydia Wimpole had always disliked and
distrusted, asked with an air of innocence, ‘But
where can you find six virgins who can dance ? And
how can you make certain that they are virgins V
It was a question which Mrs. Wimpole dismissed
with a snort.
Two weeks after the service at the house in the
Rue Spontini, passengers of the Paris found in their
midst a large, rather florid woman who dressed
always in white and wore a long white veil which
floated behind her as she walked. She seemed to
spend most of her time on deck, going round and
round tirelessly : weather had no effect upon her.
She appeared even on days when none but excellent
sailors could raise their heads from their pillows.
96
THE URN
She was conspicuous even among the usual collec-
tion of curiosities included in the passenger list of a
transatlantic liner, and gradually it became known
that she was Lydia Wimpole, widow of an Arkansas
oil magnate, and that she wore white in place of the
conventional widow’s weeds. She was, the more
interested came to learn, a devotee of everything
occult, and was preparing to present to the world a
new faith - an eclectic religion which she explained
would be the Esperanto of religions.
They also learned that she was travelling with the
ashes of the deceased Horace Wimpole, which she
carried in a special travelling case made for the pur-
pose, of purple leather embossed in gold with the
esoteric symbols of three religions.
In the large outside cabin of Mrs. Wimpole the
urn occupied a prominent place among the flowers
and boxes of bonbons sent to the steamer by ad-
mirers and disciples. Indeed, it bore an absurd re-
semblance to one more box of bonbons in' a cabin
which had the air of belonging.ta a prominent music
hall actress.
On the night of the fifth day out the widow was
seized in the middle of the night by an intense, con-
viction that someone -some .spirit -was in com-
munication with her, asking her to remove the lid
of the urn. Afterward, in recounting the experience
97
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
to the faithful Miss Hoskins, she said, 'I felt suddenly
that I was in the presence of a dazzling light and out
of the centre of it came a voice which I seemed to
recognise as that of Horace. Sitting up in my berth,
I heard it say, “You have shut me in ! You have
suffocated me! Let me be free !” And then suddenly
the light disappeared and I found myself sitting
upright in the dark cabin, conscious that I had just
participated in a marvellous experience. So I rose,
and unscrewing the lid of the urn, left the ashes open
to fresh and beautiful sea air. I have never heard the
voice, nor seen the light, from that day to this.’
But there was a part of the experience which she
neglected to relate : indeed, it was a secret shared,
strangely enough, only by the gaunt, red-faced
Norman stewardess who took care of her cabin.
This woman was a realistic creature, whose whole
mind and soul were wrapped up in keeping her row
of cabins in perfect order, so that she might thus
earn large tips and hasten her retirement from a sea-
faring life to open* 3 cate at Hesdin. She worked
mildly and thoroughly, absorbed by that single
passion which blotted out even her fatal tendency
towqjrd seasickness.
So, on the mornjng following the remarkable
revelation which came to Mrs. Wimpole, she set to
work as usual in the cabin, making the dust to fly,
98
THE URN
patting fresh water on the withered tributes of Mrs.
Wimpole’s admirers, throwing out of the porthole
fruits that had gone bad, emptying cigarette ashes.
... By eleven she had finished her work, and by the
time Mrs. Wimpole, in a cloud of white veils, de-
scended, the cabin was all in beautiful order, the
flowers were neatly arranged, the clothes hung where
they should be, the berth neatly made up. Only one
thing was changed. The urn, the sacred urn, em-
bossed with the mystic symbols of three religions,
had been moved, irreverently moved ! It stood on
the shelf above the washstand !
Mrs. Wimpole, who was by nature never very
nice to servants, grew red with anger. Crossing the
cabin, she took down the sacred urn. One glance was
enough to convey the whole of the horrible truth.
The urn was empty !
In her fury she rang all the bells at once, but for-
tunately none responded but the gaunt stewardess.
She faced the wild Mrs. Wimpole (her Veils all awry,
and her lovely serenity all vanished) With a dumb
look of astonishment.
Brandishing the urn at the stricken stewardess,
Mrs. Wimpole cried, ‘What have you done, 'you
stupid fool ! What have you d6ne !’
And the stewardess, judging from the violence
of the gestures and the article which Mrs. Wimpole
99
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
held heroically aloft that her agitation was con-
cerned with the urn, replied, ‘Madam, I simply
emptied the cigarette ashes out of the porthole ! !'
*You fool ! You idiot ! That was my husband !'
She threatened the stewardess with dismissal,
with imprisonment. She would sue the Company.
She was still making wild threats when the stewardess
-suddenly aware that she had for three days been
handing about a corpse - fled in superstitious horror
down the corridor.
For two hours Mrs. Wimpole lay more dead than
alive on the berth, and at the end of that time when
she arose she had recovered the sweet serenity which
she had displayed at the funeral. She again sum-
moned the terrified stewardess, and this time she
appeared calm and beautiful.
*You must not be afraid, my good woman,' she
said. ‘If you keep silent, I shall not hold you re-
sponsible. It was an accident. Only never mention
the subject to anyone.’ And she sped the bewildered
stewardess two voyages nearer her ambition to retire
by pressing a thousand franc note graciously into her
red and bony hand.
When the door was closed again, Mrs. Wimpole
screwed the lid carefully back on the urn, and placed
it once more among the bonbons and withered
flowers.
100
THE URN
It was this part of the story which she never told,
even to the faithful Miss Hoskins.
Six weeks after the lamentable accident, the news-
papers of the Middle West and South printed the
story of Horace Wimpole’s burial. They referred to
Horace as a man who had acquired great wealth
through the discovery of oil on his land in Arkansas.
With his wife he had lived in Paris for several years,
but like a good American he had chosen Arkansas as
his final resting-place. His ashes, contained in an
urn designed by his widow, were placed in the niche
of a rock in the highest part of the Ozarks during the
course of an impressive ceremony, at which his wife
(dressed all in white) stood by and read an ode of
her own composition. As she read, six virgins (only
the Southern press, either through modesty or an
unwarranted cynicism, referred to than as young
girls), also dressed in spotless white, executed a
‘dance pantomime’ on the theme ‘O Death, where
is thy sting 1'
A little later, pictures of the* ceremony appeared
in the illustrated dailies and in the news reels of
motion picture houses. The news reel bore the title,
‘Arkansas widow plans and carries oat novel burial
service for her late spouse. Mrs. Horace Wimpole
reads ode at final resting-place of husband, while
young girls dance to the music of Mendelssohn’s
IOI
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Spring Song.’ And then on the screen appeared the
ample figure of Lydia Wimpole, clad in flowing
white robes, a wreath of tuberoses pressed low over
her grey hair above the nose-glasses. In one hand she
held the parchment scroll from which she read the ‘ode*
beginning, ‘There is no death : one only steps across.’
In the background leapt the figures of six virgins
who had learned dancing from Henrietta Eda
McCloskey, teacher of Greek Poise in Little Rock.
It finished with the final gesture of the widow placing
the empty urn in the niche.
And when sufficient time had been allowed for
the news and pictures to percolate through the
country, it was announced that a female Messiah
had appeared bringing a new religion. The Messiah,
Lydia Wimpole by name, had of course set up head-
quarters in California.
It was all a great success, and no one knew, of
course, save the widow and a Norman ex-stewardess,
now mistress of a buvette at Hesdin, that Horace
Wimpole had escaped at last somewhere in the
middle of the Atlantic Ocean. And no one, not
even the widow or the ex-stewardess, ever knew
whether or not Horace Wimpole had really ap-
peared in a blaze of light in mid- Atlantic, crying out,
‘You have shut me in ! You have suffocated me !
Let me be free !’
102
A BAVARIAN IDYLL
T he little town lay under the edge of the
mountain, so that darkness came quickly after
sunset, like the dropping of a black curtain. You
felt at once a curious awe for the place. In the mud
and water of the fiat valley, grey and cold and drip-
ping in the chill light of the first December evening,
the tall trees were black with veils of blue mist
clinging to them. The ancient crooked houses
pressed down upon you. There was a faint sound of
a distant bell and a smell of the deciy from the
manure-heaps. The Witch’s Sabath and the Bald
Mountain were not far from the place.
You arrived at last, with the command of ‘Halt !’
in a sort of square set around by # overhanging houses,
now quite dark, where each dbor and window shel-
tered a grey and hostile face lost in the purple
shadows. We were the Enemy arriving in conquered
territory, but the word ‘enemy’ could not ‘have
meant much to those brutish fSces that peered out at
us. This hostility was more profound than the quick
hysterical hostility engendered by war. It was a
103
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
thing shared by the very trees, the cattle, the dark
houses, and the wild ruined castle that stood against
the sky above the village. It was an old world filled
with all the spectres of antiquity, and into the midst
of it came Percy Willets.
He was not more than eighteen and he came from
Texas. His father went from county to county ex-
horting men, women and children to deny the Devil
and come to God. Percy was big, and fresh-coloured,
with great big wrists and ankles. But he was the kind
of boy that women take to at once. I saw it happen-
ing month after month in shattered villages, barrack
towns and cheap ca&s. He had a kind of hopeless
appeal for hard, loose women. I think it was because
he seemed so completely fresh and virginal and yet
so tingling with animal vigour. He was all that a
weary strumpet desires in a man. He stood six feet
three in his big, bare feet, and he had red hair, and
wrists like rifle-stocks that were covered with
freckles, and bristlipg, short, red hair. His skin,
where it was not burned red by exposure, was
white as milk. His eyes were blue and candid and
childish.
Percy believed the Bible passionately. He believed
every word of it. He believed it so defiantly that he
would fight anyone who disputed it, and no one
desired to fight him, for Percy, although his mind
, 104
A BAVARIAN IDYLL
was slow, had the strength of the ox. He meant
one day to be an Evangelist himself.
If he bad been a sensitive man he would have
suffered, for the others in the Company gave him no
peace. They attacked him blasphemously; they
mocked the Bible and all his passionate beliefs.
After months of it, he gave up losing his temper. He
would only scowl, regarding them, stubborn and
puzzled, with his head lowered like that of a bull
being baited by dogs. He never quite understood
what it was all about.
There was in Percy a curious, soft, sentimental
spot that centred about the word ‘women.’ He
believed that really there were no bad women - and
maybe he was right and the rest of us Were wrong.
Bad women were only creatures like hif mother and
his sister who had been unfortunate and been
seduced and gone astray. He stuck .to this belief
with all the stubbornness of his nature, in the face of
the jeers and mockery of men who knew best the
women of bar-rooms and brothels, soldiers who had
no faith in any woman. They tormented him (I
know, because he confessed it to me after what hap-
pened in Andlau) with nightmare tales of hcprible
vices and depravities, relate^ solely for the cruel
pleasure of watching Percy suffer, as if someone had
cut him with a knife, and to hear him cry out, ‘It
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
isn’t true! It isn’t true! There aren’t any such
things ! You’re a bunch of hogs ! You’re a bunch
of dirty liars !’ For really all that Percy had in the
world was his Bible, and the curious blinding faith
in the fundamental beauty and goodness of women.
Percy had never heard of Walpurgis Nacht or the
incubi born of these black northern forests, and so
when he found himself that night in the dismal, for-
gotten town on the edge of the Black Forest he was
only depressed and homesick. He could not explain
it to himself. He had no literary or romantic
compensations.
He looked so sick and so miserable that I suggested
that the two of us take a turn through the dark,crooked
streets before falling into a sodden slumber on the
damp straw of our billet above the geese and oxen.
We walked in silence over the filthy cobble-stones,
past one or two drinking-places lighted by dim oil-
lights, past crooked, tottering houses, among shadows
cast by a moon that hid itself from time to time
among the cold cloWs. We passed fellow-soldiers
who hailed us, bored men who were already silently
wandering down the narrow streets toward the wet
fields, with some girl who might be a vampire or an
incubus. And he couldn’t speak at all. He was
caught in one of those terrible brooding spells when
the sin of the world, of all those blasphemous com-
106
A BAVARIAN IDYLL
rades of the Company, of all the horrible, revolting
stories they had poured over his head, rose up and
engulfed him. He would brood thus sometimes for
hours. It was a habit that grew on him. There were
times when I thought he was going crazy.
We came after a little time to the end of the
village, and we would have turned back then save
that a little farther up the road, set apart from the
others, stood a house with brilliantly lighted win-
dows. A sudden ray of moonlight enveloped it. At
the same time, the faint creaking of a mill-wheel
reached our ears. Silently, without even speaking of
it, we both turned once more and continued on our
way past the house.
It stood on the edge of the road, veiy white and
clean in comparison with the village, and it was
lighted by the brilliant glare of electricity. Over
the door hung a branch of pine tree. It was a drink-
ing-place. We passed it again on the second night
without going in. But on the .third the dreariness
of the sinister town grew unendurable. We went
in silently without knocking.
2
The brilliant glare of the room struck you first
-there was a swift impression of polished glasses,
107
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
of mirrors, of white, garish lights. It was a preten-
tious drinking-place in that God-forsaken village.
The mirrors were bordered with garlands of holly,
for Christmas was a week away, and bunches of
mistletoe hung from the ceiling with a wilted, dis-
couraged air. In one corner sat three sullen farmers,
hard, knotty men with beady eyes, who looked at us
with that same sullen hostility which hung like a
pall over the village.
And then behind the screen of holly you discovered
suddenly the proprietress herself, seated on a kind
of throne, knitting. She came forward to greet us
with a professional air, but the light in her eye was
born, too, of something more profound than any
mere interest in business. She was really glad to see us.
She was a fantastic creature of perhaps forty-five,
though she may have been younger, with a lined and
rayaged face all painted and powdered so thickly
that the stuff had caked and cracked.
She wore a kind of shirtwaist of silk much orna-
mented with lace, the r colour of pink which sets the
teeth on edge, and a black skirt, cut to fit her neatly
about the hips with a wide flare about a pair of silk-
clad knees. It was very short. Her black hair was
arranged intricately add with great care, and it had
been dyed so heavily and so often that it had shades
of purple in it, like the wing of a blackbird. On it
108
A BAVARIAN IDYLL
was perched a sort of mop-cap, made of lace and
poison-green silk. And on her feet she wore, not the
muddy sabots of the slatternly peasant woman, but a
ridiculous and fancy pair of cheap, high-heeled shoes
of patent-leather.
She was - you knew it on sight - a superannuated
strumpet. We never saw her in any other costume.
I believe that they buried her in it, which perhaps
was the fitting thing to do.
It was her eyes which somehow saved her. They
were blue (her hair must once have been blonde)
and they were young. It was as if, in the wretched
and washed-out body, youth survived only in the
eyes. There was something tragic and touching
in those fine eyes set in a face so old, so battered, and
so vicious. You saw her somehow in i short, worn
ballet skirt sewn with sequins, coming but when the
Madame clapped her hands and said, ‘Company,
girls,' - coming and standing in line, hoping to be
chosen by some drunken brutish soldier out of the
back streets of a dreary garrison town.
She came toward us tottering painfully on the
silly high heels. She must have had rheumatism,
caught in the damps of that forgotten German valley.
‘Good eefening !’ she said* with a rich German
accent. ‘You are Americans, not so ? Welcome !'
From that first moment she made it clear that she
109
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
did not belong here in this sodden community, that
she had nothing to do with its manure-heaps, its
crooked streets, its overhanging houses, and its foul
smells. She had nothing to do even with those
stupid, hostile peasants who sat in the corner.
There was nothing to drink save a white and
viscous liquid that went by the all-encompassing
name of ‘Schnapps,’ and nasty coffee made from
roasted acorns. Percy, who had never even tasted
alcohol, took the ‘coffee.’
The woman served us herself, and joined us at
our table. She tossed her purple hair, shrugged
her shoulders in a broken and professional coquetry.
The young eyes turned green and brilliant with
excitement.
She told us that she was called ‘Madame Rau,’
and that she had cousins in America. They were
butchers in Kansas City. She had lived in England -
yes, in London, - that was where she learned English.
The queer, half-comic accent was Cockney. She
had no sense of what ii was proper to say in English.
She said ‘Goddam’ over and over again with a bril-
liant smile, as if she were using some charming word.
She said much worse things, that are not easy to
repeat, as if she were discussing the weather. She
grew feverish with excitement. She knew only the
English of brothels.
no
A BAVARIAN IDYLL
No one entered the place, and all the while the
sullen farmers watched us and grunted and grumbled
among themselves.
She talked, and talked, pouring out tale after tale
with the passionate eagerness of one who had not
talked in years. Percy’s blue eyes seldom left her
face. When, with a complete innocence, she used
some vile word, he winced as if someone had stuck
a knife into him. He had never before talked to a
woman like this. He had always run away from them.
I knew that he was thinking in his sentimental way
that this creature was a woman, too, like his mother
and his sister who banged out revival hymns on a
tinny piano while his father exhorted Tlexan farmers
to give up the Devil and follow the Lord. He had a
way, when tormented, of pulling his big, knotty
fingers until the joints cracked, and he did it now
over and over again.
Before we left, Madame Rau (more, I thought, as
a ruse to hold us than for any other reason) went over
to the gramophone that stood in one corner, raised
a gigantic tin horn painted to imitate a morning-
glory, and set the thing to making frightful, scratchy
music. She played waltzes from The Dollar Princess
and The Merry Widow and other operettas whose
gaiety seemed to melt away into nothing in the hard,
garish room.
Ill
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
And then, without any climax, the evening came
to an end.
The woman begged us to return ever y night.
When we left, she stood in the doorway, silhouetted
against the hard, white mirrors and light, until we
had stumbled away out of sight through the chill
winter fog.
When I think of her, it is always like that, standing
in the brilliant doorway, looking after us as we dis-
appeared into the fog.
We did not see Heinrich that first night.
3
All the way home through the dark, crooked
-streets, Percy stumbled along silently. Once I said,
with the hard voice of one who had been a soldier
too long, ‘She’s as fine an example of a worn-out tart
as I’ve seen.’
He turned quickly, almost savagely. *1 don’t see
why you have to talk 1 of her like that. She’s been
good to us.’
So I said nothing more. I knew that Percy was
like His father in far-off Texas. He saw only what he
wanted to see. He was homesick to-night, and that
always made him worse.
Once during the night I was wakened by the bites
112
A BAVARIAN IDYLL
of fleas in the straw, and, half-asleep, I heard Percy
tossing and muttering to himself.
The next night I suggested that we go to Madame
Rau’s. But Percy refused abruptly, and went off
alone into the cold forest. I knew what he was doing.
He was wrestling with the problem of Madame Rau.
The second night he refused, and the third, and then
suddenly, inexplicably, he came to me and said,
*Will you go with me to that Madame Rau’s ?’
It was on this second visit that we saw Heinrich.
Madame Rau opened the door to us. You knew
that she had heard our footsteps on the wet road.
You knew that she had been listening for three days
and three nights for the friendly sound of our hob-
nailed boots. Again the room was harph with cold,
brilliant light, and again it was empty save for the
three sullen farmers, who sat in the corner watching,
watching, watching ...
Again we sat in the corner by the porzellanofen,
only this time Madame Rau c^id not serve us. She
was playing the lady. She cfapped her hands. The
sound brought to the door of the kitchen a creature
whom she addressed as Heinrich. He was clumsy,
with great splay hands and feet, and a face covered
with pimples. He had stooped shoulders and bulging
muscles. Straw-coloured hair, ill-cut and shaggy
like a sheep-dog’s, hung over his low forehead into
113
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
his eyes. His head drooped and when he looked at us
it was with a curious upward glance through the thatch
of yellow hair. It was only then that you saw what he
was - the china-blue eyes were the eyes of an idiot.
He shuffled about silently in enormous sheepskin
slippers. Their shagginess increased the impression
that you were being served by some sort of an oaf
or troll, by something kidnapped out of the gloomy,
mist-hung forests that pressed so close upon the
village.
His enormous, hairy hands poured the liquor
and Percy’s coffee with a strange, professional skill.
When he was gone again, Madame Rau began to
talk in that same passionate way in her broken
Cockney accent. I did not talk much. I yielded
place to Percy, who, it seemed, wanted earnestly to
talk.
He was still homesick and uneasy in that God-
forsaken world. He wanted to talk about Texas,
and the tents and the, camp-meetings and his father
who saved people, and his mother who led the sing-
ing with a comet, and his sister who banged out
revival tunes on the piano. He talked on and on,
passiodately, his blue eyes growing brighter and
brighter, with the look of a fanatic. The woman
listened, interested, I suppose, because she had never
heard anything like the tale he was telling her, and
n 4
A BAVARIAN IDYLL
because whatever the fantastic boy did or said had
a fascination for her. Oh, that was apparent from
the first.
Presently he turned from direct description to
a sort of subtle exhortation. He began to picture
the delights of the Evangelist life and the hysterical
joys of heaven. He sounded unconvincing, and a
little like the Book of Revelations. It was fantastic
and unreal talk, a little insane and wholly unrelated
to life. That was why he had returned. He wanted
to talk to her.
When he had quieted a little, Madame Rau
reached over and touched his big, raw, hard hand.
‘It is very naice - all dat she said, ‘and all vonder-
ful.’ I thought for a moment she had* been caught
up by his queer, emotional fire. ,
She clapped her hands, and again; the oaf ap-
peared out of the kitchen. And then a feally terrible
thing happened. The oaf stumbled in the sheepskin
slippers and the ‘Schnapps’ bottle fell on the red-
tiled floor with a crash. Fo? *a second there was a
silence, and then Madame Rau turned on him. In
the ugly dialect of the valley, she abused him, shaking
her fist in fury, and screaming. There was something
terrifying in the scene. The hatred which lay be-
neath it was a hatred impossible to describe. It was
black and obscene, too nauseous to think about. The
”5
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
oaf knelt and dumbly gathered up the wreckage. He
accepted all the tirade without a single upward
glance. When he had finished, he brought another
bottle and served us with the stolidity of a sheep.
Madame Rau made no excuses. She said, *Ach !
If you knew vat I had to put up with in this hole !
But vat can you do ?’
She hated this village, she said, and it hated her.
She was not born there. She had only lived there
for four years, because - because, well (here she
grew a bit vague) a friend gave her this little piece of
land with its vineyards and little mill. One could
live on it, she said, and the farmers had to use the
mill whether they hated her or not. Her own busi-
ness (she was again vague) had failed like all else in
the war, and she had to go somewhere simply to
keep alive. In the country there was food, at least
of a sort. In the cities there was only misery.
I saw that she was playing the lady again. She
was trying heroically to impress us. I think she knew
that I couldn’t be takes, in. But she knew that Percy
was being impressed. And she was trying to be what
he wanted to believe she was.
She said, ’They hate me in the village. They are
scared of me because I come from the outside world.
They watch me from behind doors and stone walls.
When I go into the street there are always eyes
116
A BAVARIAN IDYLL
watching me. I can feel them.’ She leaned towards
us across the table and said in a low voice, 'Those
three farmers over there -they aren’t customers.
They are a committee sent to watch me. They come
here every night and 1 can’t chase them out. And
sometimes they make me . . .’
But she did not finish that sentence.
'The women,’ she said, ‘are worse than the men.’
It was as if she were some strange animal caught
and placed in a pen. As she said, what could she do ?
Where could she go f She had tried to sell the place.
Nobody wanted to buy it. In the cities of Germany
people were dying of starvation. This tiny piece of
land was all she had. I knew why her business
had failed. An old, battered, tragic thing like that
couldn’t ply her trade any longer. There was nothing
left - nothing but the fine, passionate, young eyes.
They hated her in the village because they were
afraid she might corrupt them in some way.
'To-night,’ she was saying, ‘you must stay after
they have gone, and have supper with me. You must
go away and they’ll go too. And then you must come
back and I’ll let you in.’
I wanted to go to bed, but Percy wouldn't let
me. He had become hysterical. He wanted to rise
and throw the committee out into the muddy road.
What right had they to treat a woman thus ? All
117
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
the nostalgia, the taste for Evangelism, the senti-
mentality of Texas wastes, where women, whatever
they might be, were in theory objects of chivalry,
rose and swept over him. He got up to attack the
committee of farmers with his great, raw-boned fists.
He pushed me aside.
It was Madame Rau who restrained him. She
said it would only make things worse for her when
he was gone.
Somehow he saw the sense of what she said.
When he had grown a little more calm he said,
‘Come,. Spike. We’ll go, and when those bastards
have gone away, we’ll come back.’
So we paid our count and left.
Outside the fog had turned into a fine, cold rain,
and we sought shelter in a shed from which we
could watch the door. Percy didn’t say anything.
I think he was still so excited that he couldn’t speak
coherently. He just kept muttering to himself, and
clenching the big red fists. The Schnapps had begun
to go to my head a little, so that I didn’t even mind
standing in the mud beneath that shed. All at once,
I began to laugh, quietly and to myself. The sight
of raw-boned Percy, his big red wrists hanging out
of the sleeves of his ill-fitting army tunic, muttering
and swearing vengeance, seemed funny. ‘It’s me ’
I thought, ‘playing Sancho Panza.’
118
A BAVARIAN IDYLL
In a little while the three farmers came out.
They muttered together in their ugly dialect, and
passed close by us, and were swallowed up in the
cold rain. The oaf, Heinrich, emerged to close the
shutters. When all was black we came out again,
and knocked three times, as arranged with her.
She had been busy while we were gone. On the
table stood a bowl of onion soup and a roast hare.
The departure of the committee cleaned the air a
bit. Madame Rau tottered about on her silly high
heels, and presently we all sat down. Then, strangely
enough, the oaf took his place at one end of the table.
He ate like a pig, never looking up from his plate, but
giving us a sidelong, suspicious glance from time to
time out of the tiny, china-blue idiot’s eyes. We
grew merrier and merrier, and at last Madame Rau
set the horrible gramophone to scratching once more
and invited Percy to dance. He didn’t, of course,
know anything about dancing. The oaf retired to
the corner by the porzellanofen to bake his feet,
watching us still in the same unhealthy way.
Because I was a little drunk and the whole affair
seemed comic and fantastic, I rose and offered myself
as a partner. She danced well, despite her rheuma-
tism, despite the ridiculous hpels, and we did polkas
and mazurkas beneath the suspicious eye of the idiot
and the disapproving one of the chivalrous Percy.
1 19
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
At last, when Madame Rau was entirely breathless,
I thought a touch of gallantry would warm the poor,
battered old thing. Some devil prompted me to lass
the withered, painted cheek.
In a second there was a crash of glass and the
sound of an overturned chair. A figure sprang be-
tween us, and struck Madame Rau across the
shoulders. It was not Percy - it was the idiot.
He poured out upon her a stream of dialect. She
did not defend herself. Percy seized the idiot by the
arms and held him pinioned. I could have done
nothing against the strength of the splay hands and
grea shoulders. But Percy was stronger than the
idiot.
And Madame Rau ? She fell to the floor and be-
gan to weep in a fit of hysteria. I induced her to get
up and sit in a chair, but her wild crying did not
stop. Her black hair hung over her face. She buried
her head in her arms, and at last she cried out, ‘Go
’way ! Go ’way !’ and ran out of the room.
In the silence Percy freed the oaf, who went back
to his corner, picked up his chair, and, regarding us
with a silly, hostile grin, again put his big splay feet
into the porzellanofen. Somehow he had made fools
of the two of us. We stood there in the silent room
in the hard glare of light and mirrors, awkward and
stupid. We did not quite know what to do.
120
A BAVARIAN IDYLL
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s dear out.’
I don’t think Percy ever understood what had
happened, even when he found himself tramping
through the mud in the cold rain. He wasn’t very
bright, and he couldn’t even conceive what lay be-
hind the whole scene.
‘We’d better stay away from that place,’ I said.
‘We’re only mixing in something that’s none of our
business, and we’ll find ourselves in a mess. This
damned village and everything in it isn’t worth
it.’
He halted abruptly and looked at me. ‘You can’t
desert that poor woman now. You can’t let her
alone with those farmers -and that brute. She’s
been so kind to us -she’s had a hard time. She’s
got a soul.’ ;
‘Well,’ said I, ‘I’m never going into that unhealthy
place again. I know when I’m well out of a thing.
You can do as you damned please.’
He didn’t even answer me. He just thought me a
coward, a cynic, and a brute, to desert a woman
like that in distress.
I couldn’t tell him the truth. He wouldn’t have
believed it, anyway. I couldn’t say that anybody
who wasn’t a fool could see that Madame Rau was
living with the idiot who baked his feet in the
porzellanofen - the idiot whom those farmers had
121
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
let her have for a servant because they thought he
was so silly that no one could corrupt him.
4
I never entered the little white house again, but
Percy did. The rest of the story came to me from
his own lips between sobs and cries, for in the end
he went completely to pieces and wept like a woman.
He looked so silly, with his red hair all rumpled and
his gawky wrists sticking out of the khaki sleeves, cry-
ing like a baby.
It seems that he went back again and again, every
night, to sit there with Heinrich and the three
farmers, talking to Madame Rau. Sometimes, he
said, he didn’t talk at all, but just sat there, and once
or twice, when he looked up he caught her watching
him. He didn’t know why, of course. I don’t think
that in the end he ever understood what happened.
He only felt that in some way it was his fault.
In the daytime he prayed sometimes in secret
that he might save her. He even had some fantastic
plan of having her, a redeemed woman, a Magdalen,
return with him to Texas as a sort of exhibit in the
Baptist tent show put on by his old man. He told me
that she listened to him and seemed to show signs
of repentance and of embracing the Lamb.
122
A BAVARIAN IDYLL
In the Company his secret finally came out, and
they went about saying, ‘Have you heard how Percy
has fallen ? It’s that pious kind that is the worst.
He spends every night with that broken-down street-
walker on the edge of the village.’
The jeers, the opposition, the mockery, only made
him the more determined.
I guessed what was happening. In a last flare-up
of worn, exhausted desire, the woman was falling in
love with him. He was all that she was not. He was
young, pure, innocent and attractive, in his yokel
Baptist way. He had faith in life, where there was
none left for her. He had faith even in a creature like
her. I think it was that which touched her -the
knowledge that there was a man in all the world who
didn’t feel contempt and repulsion for her. Because
you couldn’t properly count the idiot at a man. . . .
She wanted to show Percy how die felt. She
wanted to do something in return, and there wasn’t
anything she could do, or anything die could give,
except herself. Love with her had been a business -
it was the only way she knew how to repay him.
Every night he went away, and waited in the shed
to return after the farmers had gone away. He
stayed sometimes until long after midnight, talking
to her, while the oaf sat baking his feet in the porzel-
lanofen. She gave up the gramophone and broke
123
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
the disks. She even knelt and prayed with him. All
the while the idiot watched them out of his pig-
like eyes.
And then, before Percy’s job of conversion was
quite finished, there came an order for the Company
to move on. He went on the last night to bid her
good-bye, to pray for the last time. Somehow she
got rid of the idiot, Heinrich. No one ever quite
knew what she did, but Percy found her alone. The
oaf didn’t appear even after the farmers had gone.
She had a special supper for him, and brought
out a lot of letters and telegrams, and while they
ate she told him her story, or at least one of them.
She said she had been seduced by an elderly butcher,
who rid himself of her, and gave her the piece of land
in Andlau. There must have been something in
the desertion part of the story, because the letters
and telegrams were found afterward strewn about
the floor. When she had finished her story, she began
to show him, in all the coarse, age-old ways of her
profession, that she loved him, that she meant to
give him the only thing that she had to give.
At first, Percy didn’t know what she was trying
to do, and when slowly it dawned on him, it made
him sick. He told me. that he wanted to go outside
and throw up, because the woman was horrible and
repulsive to him, and the look in her eye disgusting.
iz 4
A BAVARIAN IDYLL
And then she did something which he wouldn’t tell
me. But whatever it was, it made him sort of crazy.
And with all this, he knew, too, that he had failed.
He thought that Madame Rau had been making
game of him all along. I could never wring from him
all that she did and said, but whatever it was, she
made him know that all the horrible stories they told
in the regiment were true.
He ran out of the inn and down the road. When
he had gone, there was nothing left for her. She
hadn’t even her gramophone and her scratchy
waltzes out of The Dollar Princess and The Merry
Widow. She had even destroyed those. She had
tried everything.
Long afterwards he did tell me one thing. It was
this. As he got up to run away she caujght him by
the sleeve, and she said to him (he said if was a kind
of whisper), ‘Will you kiss me good-bye P
He hesitated, and she said, with such fierce inten-
sity, ‘You must do that, you must do that,’ that he
couldn’t refuse. *
He tried to kiss the poor old wreck, and leaned
down to her. She moved to kiss him, but at the
last moment his courage failed him. Disgust got
the better of him. He turned *a way and her painted
lips touched only the rough khaki of his shoulder.
He ran then, but before he was out of hearing,
i*5
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
he heard her cry out, ‘You couldn’t even do
that !’
It was the last word he heard her speak.
Before it was dawn the Company, starting in the
grey fog, was all up, ready to depart. Percy was
there beside me, all white, and haggard. He couldn’t
talk. He just stared into the fog. And as we waited
the order to march, a commotion arose suddenly in
the crowded street. The suspicious peasants who
were out to see the enemy leaving, suddenly grew
wild with excitement. The uproar jumped from
group to group. One of our men, who spoke German,
asked an old man standing against the wall beside
him what it was all about.
He repeated the question, and I heard the name
of Madame Rau. Then he turned to us, and said,
‘It’s a murder. That old harlot who had the inn by
the hill cut her servant’s throat, and killed herself.
They found them just now.’
Beside me the great, clumsy body of Percy slipped
into the mud.
It was when he came to that he told me the story.
We stayed behind, four of us and an officer, until
the sorry mess was cleared up. There was no doubt
about it. The woman had cut her servant’s throat
and then her own. There was only one point that
was not clear. It couldn’t be settled whether she
126
A BAVARIAN IDYLL
had killed the idiot before Percy came to the inn
or after he had gone away.
Percy never understood what had happened, and
I couldn’t very well say that if he hadn’t gone again
to the inn the crime would never have happened.
I couldn’t tell him that in a way he was the murderer
of them both.
5
Last summer I was in Texas, and the town was
plastered with signs announcing the presence of the
great Evangelist, the Reverend Percy Willets, better
known as the Doughboy Devil Chaser. There was a
meeting that night for men only.
I went. The canvas tabernacle was packed. A
man (the sister was apparently not hardened to
men’s viciousness) banged out dreary revival tunes
on the piano. There was a hush, and the Reverend
Percy Willets rose to his feet. It was the same
Percy, stupid, unaltered, sav^ that the doughboy
uniform was gone, and in its place an undertaker’s
suit of black decorated the ungainly form. He
raised the great, hairy, red hands. There w?s a
hush, and he dropped them again.
Then he began in a low, theatrical voice. It
was almost a whisper, ‘When I was younger, in
127
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
the days of my black sin, before I was bathed in
the blood of the Lord, I caused a woman to commit
murder and suicide. . .
Then he waited for a moment until this had im-
pressed his hearers sufficiently.
(Oh, yes. Percy had grown up and learned a
trade. He wasn’t a fool any longer.)
I heard him impressively repeating the phrase a
little louder, ‘When I was younger, in my days of
black sin, before I was bathed in the blood of the
Lord, I caused a woman to commit murder and
suicide. . . .’
He was a success - Percy. He knew what he was
doing. He knew how to get an effect. That open-
ing sentence went big. He was letting all the other
folks know that one of the boys had found the light.
He knew now that there were women like that,
and it didn’t seem to upset him much.
It had all happened ten years ago.
128
NIGEL-A PURELY ENGLISH STORY
A s I returned from the morning walk through
the pine forest, prescribed by the doctor, I
found the other four occupants of the Grand
Wilhelmina Hotel and Sanatorium in the bright
little garden. It was off season, and the corridors
of the establishment echoed and re-echoed with
each voice, each shout, each whisper. The sound
of your heels on the bare wooden floors rattled and
reverberated. The curtains were down and the
carpets up, all being cleaned, scrubbed, an4 sprinkled
with strong-smelling German disinfectant by the
grim proprietress, Frau Bocklander. ■
In the garden three of the five patrons of Frau
Bocklander’s establishment were seated about a
table at the far terrace, having^ their morning tiUeul.
These were Professor Potts, Mrs. Winterbottom
and her companion, Miss Wadleigh-Nipham. The
fourth patron beside myself - Mr. Jones by name -
was engaged as usual in exercising his pair of white
poodles upon the other terrace which overhung the
old town just above the spire of the Frauenkirche.
i 129
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
He always exercised the dogs, as he did everything
else, at exactly the same hour. The poodles were,
I think, the centre of all his emotions ; indeed, of
his entire existence, for he displayed no interest
whatever in humanity. No one else was allowed
to keep dogs at the Grand Wilhelmina Hotel and
Sanatorium. Frau Bocklander permitted Mr. Jones
to keep the dogs only because he had lived in the
establishment in season and out since the days when
Frau Bocldander’s mother-in-law was the reigning
proprietress. That was more than thirty years ago.
Although we outnumbered Mr. Jones four to one,
it was not he who was the pariah of the Grand
Wilhelmina. We were the pariahs. He had cast
us out. By some means this small, pot-bellied,
bald little man made us feel vulgar and inferior.
Aside from a grudging ‘Good morning’ which he
flung at us once a day, he addressed no word to
any of us. Sometimes he held a conversation with
Frau Bocklander. So I had been cast without choice
into the company of the Professor, Mrs. Winter-
bottom, and her companion.
The presence of Mr. Jones caused the two ladies
a great deal of unhappiness, simply because they
could find out nothing about him. Even Frau
Bocklander knew nothing save that he had come
there thirty years ago and that he lived on an income.
130
NIGEL
He was unmistakably English ; neither Scotch,
Irish, nor Welsh, but English. Mrs. Winterbottom
had long ago pumped Frau Bocklander more than
dry of all information without discovering a single
detail regarding the family, the property, the politics,
or the love life of Mr. Jones. Simply because one could
discover nothing about him, this plain, stupid little
man remained a glamorous subject of mystery and
false speculation. Miss Wadleigh-Nipham had the
most romantic theories. She thought that he might
have committed a murder or that at least he was the
sinister offspring of some member of the Royal
House.
As I approached the table of the other three
pariahs, I heard Professor Potts say calmly, ‘He
knew the table was Gladys because it caine and sat
on his lap !’ >
At least they were not comparing symptoms.
Their sense of relationship to each other was subtle.
Mrs. Winterbottom was the widow of a Birmingham
manufacturer of drain tiles, in "Which career he had,
she said, made a tidy fortune. She was an endless
knitter, beginning one garment as soon as another
was completed, and like most endless knitters* she
was an endless talker. She was Nonconformist, and
talked a good deal of money. Miss Wadleigh-
Nipham was the daughter of a Church of England
13X
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
clergyman from Hampshire. She was aged vaguely
about fifty, wore her thin hair in an elaborate and
fuzzy pompadour, peered through steel-rimmed
spectacles, and had a hairy mole on her chin. When
not engaged in reading aloud to Mrs. Winterbottom
so that that lady need not interrupt her knitting
Miss Wadleigh-Nipham indulged her interest in
spiritualism and water-colours. She was very re-
fined. The professor was a retired schoolmaster,
and all that you might suppose a retired schoolmaster
to be, but like many English at the passing of middle
age, he had developed a single violent eccentricity.
This was, in the case of Professor Potts, a beard in
which he took great pride. It was rich, dyed, and
perfumed. I think he wore it as a symbol of his
release from the dreary lot of a schoolmaster. He
flaunted it. It was always Professor Potts’ beard
which entered the room first. With Miss Wadleigh-
Nipham it was always the hairy mole, and with Mrs.
Winterbottom always the capacious bosom. Owing
perhaps to the Proiessor’s long experience with the
pure abstractions of higher mathematics, he had
acquired a naive and scarcely creditable gullibility
regarding all worldly things. You had only to tell
him some grotesque, theory to have him not only
believe it, but set out at once to convert you to your
own belief. Although he talked a great deal, he
132
NIGEL
was not a conversationalist. With him all talk
became a sort of public address, a habit, I suppose,
developed through long contact with schoolboys.
Mrs. Winterbottom was of vulgar origin, but rich.
Miss Wadleigh-Nipham was poor, but the daughter
of a clergyman and an obscure cousin of a Hamp-
shire county family called Nipham-Tokes, to which
she was constantly referring upon the slightest
excuse. The Professor was of nondescript origin,
and only moderately well off, but was regarded as
intellectual. Totalling their various debits and
credits, I think the three of them came to a mutual
and unspoken understanding that socially they were
equals. All, perhaps, except Miss Wadleigh-Nip-
ham. There were moments when I think she felt
herself superior to the other two. Whenever Mrs.
Winterbottom sensed this feeling, she would, in order
to restore her own self-respect and to put Miss
Wadleigh-Nipham in her place, order her companion
to find a book and read aloud to her.
I think they were all a littlfi upset by me. As
a journalist who did not speak with a Cockney accent,
they found me puzzling. I fitted in none of those
pigeonholes which have for so long kept the British
Empire stable and in good orjler and which causes
English strikers, despite themselves, to bring their
children to witness the changing of the guard at
*33
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Buckingham Palace. I troubled them. I was not
ticketed and labelled.
I joined the group, ordered my tilleul, and asked,
‘What on earth are you talking about ?’
Mrs. Winterbottom answered me. ‘Professor
Potts has just been telling us of his brother’s re-
markable experiences with spiritualist mediums.’
‘Mrs. Potts,’ said Miss Wadleigh-Nipham, ‘Gladys,
if I may use her Christian name - was the wife of
Professor Potts’ brother. She was dead, of course,
at the time of the communications.*
‘She had been dead for some ten years,’ explained
the Professor, ‘when she saw fit to communicate
with my brother.’
‘Professor Potts’ brother only died himself last
winter,’ footnoted Mrs. Winterbottom.
‘He hopes to get into communication with him,’
said Miss Wadleigh-Nipham. ‘It is one of the most
extraordinary experiences that have come my
way.’
So he knew the table was Gladys because it came
and sat on his lap.
The Professor seemed lost in his memories of
the, experience, and Mrs. Winterbottom observed,
‘Mr. Jones’ throat seems to be better.’
'I notice he’s taken off his woolly,’ said Miss
Wadleigh-Nipham. ‘I think it’s always bad to
134
NIGEL
take a woolly off your throat at this season. I mean
when you’re used to it.’
Mrs. Winterbottom knitted two and purled
three. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘you ought to speak to
him. A man like that alone with no one to look
after him !’
The suggestion fell upon thin air and perished
unheeded. It was in its intention nothing more
than a move in the game that went on perpetually
among us. The object of this game was to force
one of us into the position of opening a conversation
with Mr. Jones. None of us, and certainly not
myself, had either the courage or the intention of
approaching Mr. Jones and beginning a conversa-
tion. He had developed the power of repelling
you to an amazing degree. Even the .passionate,
devouring curiosity of Mrs. Winterbottom had
never driven her to the attack. Notor she was
playing upon Miss Wadleigh-Nipham’f interest in
operations, illnesses, affections, and afflictions. But
the companion only allowed the* remark to die.
I was aware, too, that these three understood
that the desiccated, mysterious Mr. Jones was a
gentleman, and that this disturbed them. We knew
that he was an English gentleman because he
was so rude and uncivil ; for among us, unlike
other civilised races, bad manners are prized and
*35
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
even acquired at great pains as a sign of distinction.
Suddenly I saw Miss Wadleigh-Nipham poke Mrs.
Winterbottom violently and exclaim in a stage*
whisper, ‘There she goes now !’ and I became aware
that our little colony at the Grand Wilhelmina had
been increased by one.
Going down the path was the most extraordinary
woman. In the nineteenth century she would
certainly have been called a ‘female.* She was
colossally fat and moved painfully, as if her feet
were too small for her great weight. She was
dressed in a black suit with a voluminous skirt and
a pink satin shirtwaist trimmed with gold lace. On
her head she wore what could only be described as
a confection. It was of red plush and adorned with
flowers and plumes. Over it, she wore, flung back
over her shoulders with an abandoned air of a
voluptuous and impatient bride, a long purple veil.
She was obviously Spanish or Italian, and possessed
that greasiness of complexion which is only possible
among Latin peoples.-' She passed us with a sound
of clanking which emanated from masses of barbaric
imitation jewellery which adorned her neck, wrists,
ears,, and Angers.
‘Who is she i* I asked.
Professor Potts answered me. ‘It is Madame
Venturing the distinguished medium.’
136
NIGEL
She had arrived last night, explained Mrs. Winter-
bottom, and although she was not English, it ap-
peared that, like the rest of us, she suffered from a
liver. This knowledge Mrs. Winterbottom had
already garnered from Frau Bocklander.
So it was the arrival of Madame Venturini which
had led up to the extraordinary remark about Gladys
and the table.
Madame Venturini sailed heavily out of the gate
on her way to the famous and unique spring of
Eckenbaden. The clock in the Frauenkirche struck
ten, and Mr. Jones led the poodles into the back
garden where they passed their days. As I have
said, he did everything on schedule. Returning, he
went down the neat gravel path recently trod by
the majestic step of Madame Venturing. He was
not bound for the unique and famous spring, for
although he had lived in Eckenbaden for thirty years
and was English, he had no liver. He was bound to
fetch his Morning Post which arrived every day by
the ten-thirteen train from Coblentz. The Morning
Post was another thing which helped to widen the
great chasm between Mr. Jones and Mrs. Winter-
bottom. If it had been the Daily Mail that he
went each day to fetch, she would, I think, have
forced a conversation.
Miss Wadleigh-Nipham blew her nose (it was
137
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
always slightly red at the tip from a habit she had
of blowing it whenever she ran out of small talk).
With her free hand she produced a book which
she had been concealing, somewhat shamefacedly, I
thought, in her lap. It was a thick volume bound
in the ugly durable fashion of the late nineteenth
century. In heavy gold letters appeared a title
which sounded rather like that of a bad romantic
novel of the same period. It was called Nigel.
Then I saw the name of the author and remem-
bered. I had read it myself years ago when desperate
for something to read. I discovered it in the drawer
of a dressing-table in a pine-front hotel in the far
reaches of Saskatchewan. The author was Hilary
Passamore, Duke of Wintringham. I understood
why Miss Wadleigh-Nipham handled it with so
much awe. Its presence there on the table among
the empty tilleul cups and bits of kuchen raised the
whole tone of the party.
‘Now that he’s gone,’ said Mrs. Winterbottom in
the voice of a conspirator, ‘Esme can read it to
us.’
‘The book belongs to Mr. Jones,’ explained Esme,
or Miss Wadleigh-Nipham. ‘And he doesn’t know
we have it. I induced Frau Bocklander to pretend
she wanted to read it. I just happened to see it
one day when I was passing his door. He was out,
X38
NIGEL
and his door happened to be open. So when Madame
Venturini arrived . . .’
‘He doesn’t know who Madame Venturini really
is,’ interrupted Mrs. Winterbottom. ‘Frau Bock-
lander says he has a horror of mediums.’
‘It’s the only book he has,’ observed Miss Wad-
leigh-Nipham, who most certainly had been snoop-
ing, ‘except the Bible and a full edition of Lord
Byron.’
‘Let us begin reading,’ said Professor Potts in a
voice that reproved us for having fallen into chit-
chat. ‘When Miss Wadleigh-Nipham has tired, I
will take it up.’
Although Miss Wadleigh-Nipham passed many
hours each day in reading aloud, she was, I knew,
tireless. She even took a pleasure in reading aloud.
She read with ‘expression,’ and alwayi identified
herself, I felt, with the youngest and moat ravishing
creature in the book. Except for her water-colours,
for which Mrs. Winterbottom allowed her very
little time, reading was the only outlet of what was
a strongly emotional nature.
She began to read, but Mrs. Winterbottom, who
was no disciple of the literature of escape and allowed
no book to carry her away from the more fascinating
details of life, interrupted her. ‘We thought,’ she
said, ‘that when Madame Venturini felt more her-
139
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
self, we might induce her to hold a stance. Pro-
fessor Potts thought it would be nice to communi-
cate with his brother. He was always such a pro-
found believer.*
Many people have read Nigel, and there are
doubtless many even to-day, like the little group
on the terrace, who once regarded it as a Bible.
There are even people, no doubt, who still believe
it passionately despite all that happened afterward.
It is not a romance, or at least not a romance in the
accepted sense. Nigel is the history of communica-
tions held between the Duke of Wintringham and
his dead son.
The part being read by Miss Wadleigh-Nipham
was what is commonly called ‘introductory material.’
It described in much detail Wintringham Abbey,
Wintringham House in Hyde Park Terrace, and
Uggleuch Castle, the ducal seat in Scotland. While
Miss Wadleigh-Nipham read, the little boy Nigel
grew into adolescence, went to Eton, and at length
into the army. From time to time, Miss Wadleigh-
Nipham interrupted her reading long enough to
pass the book about in order that we might see the
illustrations. There were pictures of Nigel in kilts,
aged four, at Uggleuch Castle, of Nigel, aged seven,
on his pony before the stables of Wintringham
Abbey, Nigel at twelve with a cricket bat, Nigel
140
NIGEL
at fifteen in an Eton topper and at length, Nigel
as a young man in the uniform of the Guards. There
were, too, many engaging open-throated Byronic
photographs of Nigel, in, as it were, deshabille.
Then, in the rich voice she employed while
reading, Miss Wadleigh-Nipham gave us several
anecdotes of what Nigel had said or done as a child.
These were written in the fashion of a doting
mamma recounting what little Evelyn had said to
Nanny when he refused to eat his porridge. It
would all have been hopelessly sentimental and in
bad taste but for its obvious sincerity and its touch-
ing earnestness. For once in his life the Duke,
whom I knew only as a vain and testy old man,
had stripped himself of all vanity. He had loved
this boy. That much was quite clear.
And then I made a fatal error. I chanced to
murmur that Wintringham Abbey was one of the
finest places in England, and Mrs. Winterbottom,
who missed nothing, forced me breathlessly to ad-
mit that I had stayed there tKree times. At once
I was aware of a change of attitude towards me.
I was placed. I had visited a Duke, the very Duke
who had written this book. I was no longer simply
a journalist who did not speak with a Cockney
accent.
I admitted that I had seen pictures of Nigel that
141
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
were not in the book, and that I had even seen
Nigel’s pony, which at the time I visited the Abbey
had attained the remarkable age of thirty-one years.
The book was forgotten while Mrs. Winterbottom
pumped details from me as water from a well.
I told them that for forty years the Duke had
been known as a vain and crotchety old Tory whose
only weakness was his passion for stances and
mediums. There were always mediums coming and
going from Wintringham Abbey and Wintringham
House. I had myself encountered them together
with the famous Wintringham ghost (who was an
old lady in an Elizabethan ruff) wandering through
the chill corridors of the great house - greasy, untidy
women rather like Madame Venturini. The Duke
went furtively to table-tippings in Bloomsbury,
Hammersmith, and Bayswater. He put up his oym
guineas to defend foreign ladies arrested for fraud,
and became head and principal financial support of
the Spiritualist Society. He had whole collections
of photographs of fairies, and others of fat women in
trances from whose open mouths streamed strange
figures in ectoplasm. He wrote eagerly articles on
spiritualism for the cheaper newspapers, which were
eagerly accepted and printed because he was a Duke
and which would have been as eagerly rejected if
he had been a clerk. Every spiritualist was invited
142
NIGEL
to stay at Wintringham Abbey. I even knew of
unscrupulous people who became converted to
spiritualism in order to get an invitation to stay
at the Abbey and so to better their social careers.
But of course Nigel was his meistenoerk .
The old Duke, I imagined, must be at least
ninety-five by now.
Miss Wadleigh-Nipham resumed the reading ;
and, watching Mrs. Winterbottom, I decided from
her expression that she was growing impatient for
the portion devoted to the death and funeral of
Nigel and the grief of his relatives.
We were now treated to a description of Nigel’s
exploits. He was a youth of much physical beauty
(to judge from his pictures) and, according to the
Duke (who implied the knowledge as discreetly as
possible), not only possessed an irresistible attraction
for the ladies, but also a willingness to concede to
their desires, and so became entangled With many
feminine admirers. He was, of course, as the Duke
pointed out quite frankly, one bf the great catches
of England, less perhaps because of his personal at-
tractions than because of seven titles and thres
hundred thousand a year which would be his upon
succession. ,
I fancy Miss Wadleigh-Nipham found this por-
tion of the book singularly moving, for her voice
*43
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
grew deeper and deeper and began to tremble. Per*
haps it was only the excitement of coming upon so
romantic a figure as Nigel in a book supposedly
devoted only to ghosts.
Then we reached the chapter headed, somewhat
inappropriately, considering the earlier hints re-
garding the amorous dallyings of the hero, ‘Young
Galahad sets out upon his Quest.’
The Quest was in the direction of Bessarabia.
Nigel involved himself as a volunteer in the army
of Bessarabians engaged in one of their periodic
revolts against their masters the Turks. At this
point I began to suspect the sincerity of Nigel.
He was following the career of Lord Byron too
closely to escape the suspicion of plagiarism. It
seemed to me that a good poseur might have
thought up something more original. The open
throats and flowing locks of Nigel were too good to
be true.
But Miss Wadleigh-Nipham had no such base
suspicions. Lowering the book for an instant, she
regarded me with damp eyes and remarked in a
voice quite different from the one she used in reading,
‘What a wonderful young man he must have been I
It’s a pity young mep aren’t like that any longer.
But ideals have changed so since his day.’
She raised the book to resume the reading, when
*44
NIGEL
Mrs. Winterbottom said in a stage-whisper, ‘There
he is now, come back !’ The book vanished quickly
in Miss Wadleigh-Nipham’s lap.
Through the gate, bearing his Morning Post , came
Mr. Jones. He passed us without any sign of being
aware of our presence, without turning to see his
purloined book clutched between the hysterical
knees of Miss Wadleigh-Nipham, without noting
the flushed and guilty expression on her thin face.
*We can read again to-night in the drawing-room
when he has gone to bed,’ said Mrs. Winterbottom,
who felt that calamity and death were approaching
rapidly. ‘It’s too bad. It was just beginning to be
interesting.’
So that day we read no more.
An hour later, Heinrich, the porter, appeared
bearing Mrs. Winterbottom’s Daily Mail, and no
sooner had Miss Wadleigh-Nipham opened it to
read aloud to Mrs. Winterbottom than I heard a
cry of astonishment. Sitting on the far end of the
terrace, I was engaged in wrifing to a maiden aunt
from whom one day I expect a legacy. I heard
Miss Wadleigh-Nipham cry out, ‘Do come here,
Mr. Evans ! The most extraordinary thing has
happened !’ ,
Impatiently, I went over. Miss Wadleigh-Nip-
ham, who was a perfect companion, allowed Mrs.
k 145
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Winterbottom the pleasure of breaking the news.
‘He is dead,’ she said breathlessly.
‘Who?’
‘The Duke of Wintringham.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘there is nothing astonishing in that.
He must have been at least ninety-five.*
‘But don’t you see ?’ asked Miss Wadleigh-
Nipham.
‘See what ?’
‘It’s like an omen — I mean his dying like that
just while we were reading Nigel /’
‘Evidently,’ I said, ‘he must have died some time
before we began reading Nigel. The Daily Mail
has had time to be printed and sent all the way to
Eckenbaden since his death.’
‘But it’s all the same,’ said Mrs. Winterbottom
firmly. ‘It’s like he died at the same time.’ She
made a clucking noise. ‘And with Madame Ven-
turini right here in the same hotel ! It seems like
Providence.*
I still refused to admit finding in this chain of
circumstances evidence of the workings of Fate.
In his schoolmaster’s voice, Professor Potts said,
‘We must certainly arrange the stance as soon as
possible. I will speak to Frau Bocklander about it
to-day at lunch. It may be that we have been
chosen by his Grace as the instruments of his com-
146
NIGEL
munication. To-morrow night would be a very
good time.*
Miss Wadleigh-Nipham began to read aloud the
Daily Mail’s account of the Duke’s demise. ‘Duke
of Wintringham’s Death* ran the streamer. ‘Amaz-
ing Stories of Spirit Communication.*
His Grace, it appeared, had passed away at
Wintringham Abbey from the infirmities of old
age, to be succeeded by his heir, the Viscount Passa-
more who, it would be remembered, had married
the actress, Miss Mazie Dare, some twenty years
earlier, a match known as one of the happiest in
the long annals of the many alliances which had
taken place between the stage and the aristocracy.
A son, Nigel Passamore, had died gallantly some
thirty years before the death of the late Duke, as
a volunteer on the side of the Bessarabians during
their heroic revolt against the Turks. The late
Duke had been the author of a celebrated book
dealing with a series of communications claimed to
have been received from this sdn after death. On his
own deathbed the old Duke had promised to return
and communicate with believers in Spiritualism.
‘To think that it’s this very book !’ murjnured
Mrs. Winterbottom, as if ^none of us had fully
realised it until now.
Miss Wadleigh-Nipham was still reading as I
1 47
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
turned and went away to finish my correspondence.
Crossing the garden, I was forced to step aside in
order to let pass Madame Venturini, who was re-
turning from her morning draught of the waters of
Eckenbaden. She swept past me in a clanking
of jewellery and she left in her trail a fog of cheap
rouge, perspiration, and patchouli.
If I were Miss Wadleigh-Nipham I would doubt-
less begin this portion of the story thus, ‘How shall
I attempt to describe the tumult of events during
the past two days f How shall one humble, in-
adequate pen record the emotions and the excite-
ment which has set this quiet corner of the world
by its ears ?’ The style of Miss Wadleigh-Nipham
is perhaps overheated and too intense.
Suffice it to say that on the evening of the same
day, after Mr. Jones had retired, I went to the
drawing-room, whereT found my three companions
in the adventure of Nigel already huddled about
the fire. Miss Wadleigh-Nipham was reading in
that voice which she dedicated to reading. As they
glanced up I saw in the three pairs of eyes the re-
flection of a new respect, and then I remembered
that I had once visited a Duke.
148
NIGEL
They had already reached that portion of the
story for which Mrs. Winterbottom had been
waiting with such morbid impatience. Miss Wad-
leigh-Nipham was reading of Nigel’s gallantry and
death. He had extinguished single-handed the
flames of a burning Bessarabian village and had
rescued from worse than death fourteen Bessarabian
women of various ages when he was struck down
by a Turkish bullet. A Bessarabian comrade, well
shielded by a heavy stone wall, saw him fall, but
in order to save his own life and to complete the
partially abortive rescue of the fourteen peasant
women from worse than death, he was himself
forced to flee and to leave Nigel dying in the middle
of the village street. He had, however, just time
to catch Nigel’s dying words. They j were, ‘Go !
Leave me and save the wretched women ! What
is my life compared to their virtue ?’
So the women had been bustled off by the com-
rade. None ever saw Nigel again, and none knew
where his body lay buried. 0
At this point Miss Wadleigh-Nipham’s voice,
which had been mounting like a rocket in a blaze
of elocutionary splendour, gave way altogether. She
was forced to remove her spectacles and dry her
eyes. Mrs. Winterbottom stopped knitting. I
think that she was a little disappointed that so
149
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
little space had been devoted to the grief and suf-
fering of Nigel’s relatives.
*A truly noble young man,’ murmured Professor
Potts in a hollow voice. ‘It makes me think of
what the great Duke of Wellington once said.’
‘What was that ?’ asked Mrs. Winterbottom.
Professor Potts straightened himself in his chair
and said in his deepest voice (the one he must have
used on class days), ‘Waterloo was won on the
playing fields of Eton.’
As a sort of training for the stance which Frau
Bocklander had managed since lunch to arrange
with Madame Venturini for the following evening,
we finished reading Nigel that night. What re-
mained of the book concerned itself with the com-
munications from the Nigel of the other world.
These came in a variety of manners, some in dreams,
some by way of ouija-boards, some were messages
brought by the fairies, and some came through
mediums at Wintringham Abbey or in darkened
rooms in Bloomsbury, Hammersmith, and Bays-
water. For several of the communications Madame
Venturini had been responsible.
Here Professor Potts interrupted to explain that
the Madame Venturini mentioned in the book was
the mother of the one staying at the Grand
Wilhelmina Hotel and Sanatorium. The gift of
* 5 °
NIGEL
clairvoyance, lie pointed out, was frequently in-
herited.
The reading was resumed, and as I listened I
could not but think that the person or persons
responsible for the communications, whether he or
they were the Duke himself, the mediums, the
fairies, or Nigel, showed a singular lack of originality
and inventiveness in the account of the next world.
After his heroic death in Bessarabia Nigel had, he
said, simply passed over the border into a world
which was almost the same as the one he had quit
under such heroic circumstances. In this new world
they had newspapers, sardines, gramophones, sofa-
cushions, and automobiles. The principal difference
appeared to be that in the new country pins did
not prick, knives did not draw blood, jautomobiles
did not run into pillar-boxes, and tfyere was no
ptomaine poisoning and no livers and hence no such
watering-places as Eckenbaden (a thing which I was
beginning to think for the first time would be a
pity). On the other hand, although there was no
bodily pain, neither did there seem to be any bodily
pleasure, for there were lusts neither of flesh nor of
appetite. The change, I confess, seemed to me
scarcely worth making. Nevertheless Nigel, who
had been somewhat of a Don Juan in this world,
appeared to be entirely happy and at ease in the next.
151
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
It would all have been ludicrous and absurd save
for the naive and genuine grief of the old Duke at
his son’s death and for the obvious happiness which
he drew from the ‘communications.’ In both there
was an element which commanded respect. The
old man was so sincere and so proud and so earnest
that you could not in good taste scoff at the comfort
he drew from such ladies as the mother of the
heavily perfumed Madame Venturini. As Miss
Wadleigh-Nipham read on, we no longer interrupted
her. Even Mrs. Winterbottom grew quiet and
forgot to knit and purl. We arrived at the last line.
‘And so ,’ it read, * I feel that we have never lost Nigel
and that one day - a day which I sometimes await with
impatience - we shall meet again in a new and better
world. I know that Nigel is awaiting his father*
Miss Wadleigh-Nipham closed the book and Pro-
fessor Potts said, in a deep voice, ‘That is a meeting
which I should like to witness. It may be taking
place even now.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Mrs. Winterbottom, ‘Madame
Venturini can get us a message from Nigel himself.’
‘I am sure,’ I said, ‘that she will be able to get
us messages from anyone we care to hear from.’
I slept badly that night. I was troubled with
strange dreams in which ectoplasm seemed to be
issuing from the mouth of the sleeping Professor
* 5 *
NIGEL
Potts. Miss Wadleigh-Nipham and Mrs. Winter-
bottom, dad in native Bessarabian costume, seemed
to be among the unfortunate Bessarabian ladies
being saved willingly or unwillingly from worse than
death. I was awakened early in the morning when
the threads of my dreams became entangled with
the threads of reality. As I opened my eyes I
realised that lusty screams which had nothing to do
with nightmare, were being rocketed into the air
somewhere near at hand. They appeared, indeed,
to come from just beneath my window. Rising
and looking out, I saw what can only be described
as an ejection.
On the neat gravel path Madame Venturini was
engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Heinrich,
the stalwart porter. The object of thd battle ap-
peared to be a Gladstone bag belonging to the
celebrated medium. Outside the gate oa the road-
way, in a neat pile, stood the remainder of Madame
Venturini’s gawdy luggage, which resembled in its
variety and colour the baggage of a departing troupe
of animal trainers. In the midst of the combat
Madame Venturini kept screaming insults in bad
German at Frau Bocklander, who stood silent in
the doorway with her arms grijnly folded. Opposite
me on the other side of the court, the figures of
Mrs. Winterbottom and Miss Wadleigh-Nipham
*53
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
appeared, chastely hidden all save the heads behind
the chintz curtains. A little lower down the rich
purple beard of Professor Potts jutted over the
window-sill.
In the end it was Heinrich who won the struggle.
Wresting the Gladstone bag from Madame Ven-
turini, he ran down the path and placed it outside
the gate atop the remainder of her luggage, and
when the celebrated medium waddled after him to
seize it and return to the hotel, he craftily locked
the gate, shutting her outside. She stood there
shaking her fist and screaming imprecations through
the iron bars.
After breakfast there was a second flurry of ex-
citement. Two strangers arrived to stay at the
Grand Wilhelmina. They were men - clearly im-
portant men. One had the air of a solicitor and
carried a dispatch-case. The other was a gentleman
of about fifty with a red face, large white moustaches,
and the air of a congenial rip. Both had very little
luggage. Mrs. Winterbottom discovered them in
low-voiced conversation with Frau Bocklander, but
was unable to pry any information from the pro-
prietress. In her excitement over this mystery she
even forgot for the moment Madame Venturini.
It was only when I met my three fellow-pen-
sioners at the famous spring of Eckenbaden that I
*54
NIGEL
learned the story of Madame Venturini’s dramatic
exit. Mrs. Winterbottom had discovered all. The
whole thing, she said, was the fault of the ill-tem-
pered Mr. Jones. She was indignant and puffed
and blew a good deal during the recital of Madame
Venturini’s wrongs. Mr. Jones, it appeared, had a
discerning eye, and suspected at once the profession
of Madame Venturini. When Frau Bocklander
admitted that the foreign woman was a medium,
Mr. Jones flew into a tantrum. He jumped up and
down and behaved in a manner altogether out of
keeping with his previous behaviour. He could not
abide mediums. He would not even stay under the
same roof with one. Frau Bocklander could take
her choice. Either Madame Venturini must leave
the Grand Wilhelmina Hotel and Sanatorium or
he would leave it. And Frau Bocklander, being a
good business woman, chose to keep Mr. Jones, who
had occupied a whole suite for thirty years (indeed,
had she not inherited him from her mother-in-
law ?) to Madame Venturini,* who occupied but
one shabby room and was only a temporary boarder.
‘So Frau Bocklander,* said Mrs. Winterbottom
breathlessly, ‘told Madame Venturini that sh? was
cleaning and redecorating the ( entire establishment,
and that Madame Venturini would have to find
rooms elsewhere.’ But the medium grew suspicious,
*55
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
and refused to go. Thus had occurred the scandalous
scene of which all of us were witnesses.
The plans for the stance had of course been dis-
rupted. If we were to communicate with Nigel,
the Duke and Professor Potts’ brother or Gladys,
Madame Venturini, who in the interim had had her
l«gg a g e removed with dignity, would have to be
found somewhere in the town. Professor Potts volun-
teered to undertake this mission, and I left them to
set out for the morning walk through the pine forest.
When I returned, it was clear that new stories
had invaded the Grand Wilhelmina. True, Mr.
Jones was exercising his poodles as usual, but with
him, walking up and down the terrace above the
Frauenkirche, was one of the strangers -the one with
the red face and white moustaches and the air of
a congenial old rip. And on the other terrace sat
Mrs. Winterbottom. She was in distress. She was not
knitting, and Miss Wadleigh-Nipham held a bottle
of smelling-salts under her nose. Professor Potts
regarded the tableau with sympathy, although I
did see him cast a single malignant glance at Mr.
Jones. He made some remark which I was not near
enough to hear.
But as I approached, Miss Wadleigh-Nipham gave
me a look and said, ‘The most awful thing has hap-
pened !’
156
NIGEL
Mrs. Winterbottom recovered her senses suffi-
ciently to break the news herself. ‘That/ she said,
pointing to Mr. Jones and gasping a little, ‘ that is
Nigel. He was never dead at all !’
The rest of the story has long since become
public property, and you have doubtless read and
forgotten it. Mrs. Winterbottom and Miss Wad-
leigh-Nipham will never forget it, and they will,
I think, never forgive ‘Mr. Jones.’ It was as if he
had planned a deception of thirty years’ standing
simply to upset their dignity. Even when I pointed
out to them that ‘Mr. Jones’ was no linger ‘Mr.
Jones,’ but the sixth Duke of Wintringham, they
were not impressed. He had hurt them too deeply
by his colossal deception. -
The truth was that Nigel had never died at all.
He had been captured by the Turks, but he had
lost his memory and for four y£ars he remained lost
to the world that had known him. Wandering now
here, now there in the Levant, he had managed to
live somehow, a poor romantic gentleman .with
dimmed wits. And then one ( morning in a cafe in
Athens he had picked up an English newspaper to
read that the Duke of Wintringham had come to
1 57
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Greece on a mission for the government. And slowly
he began to remember, not only Wintringham Abbey
and Uggleuch Castle, bnt that his name was Nigel
Passamore and that he was none other than the
heir of the Duke of Wintringham. He was, it seemed,
not quite certain even then that he was in his proper
senses, and he said nothing to anyone but went
direct to the Grand Metropole Hotel in search of
the Duke. He met him in the corridor of the hotel
as the Duke was coming from the bathroom clad
only in a flannel dressing-gown. At sight of him
the Duke very nearly had a fit of apoplexy, and
when he had recovered a little he then thought
that Nigel was only a materialisation. But when
there was no doubt as to the solidity of Nigel’s
flesh and bones, he claimed loudly that Nigel was
a fraud. It must have seemed to Nigel that his
father wished him dead and was determined to
have him so. But there remained one piece of evi-
dence. Nigel tore open his shirt and showed his
father the birthmark that was unmistakable proof.
Then the Duke locked the door of his bedroom,
collapsed, and told Nigel the whole truth.
He told him that he had written a book called
Nigel which had caused a great sensation and was being
read everywhere - in England, in America, in India,
in South Africa, in Canada, in Australia. People had
158
NIGEL
come to him in hundreds seeking comfort and en-
lightenment upon the subject of spiritualism. The
book had advanced the cause more than any amount
of money or education. In the terror that struck
at the Duke’s colossal vanity, the father wept. What,
he asked, was he to do ? If Nigel appeared now,
his father would be a laughing-stock before the whole
world.
They talked for hours while the Duke kept a
whole train of Greek officials waiting outside the
door, and at last they reached a decision. Nigel
was to return to Europe, but not to England, and
he was to remain in hiding until they planned a
course of action. The Duke knew a good place
to hide. It was in the Black Forest, and was called
Eckenbaden. Before they parted, Nigel asked for
a copy of the famous book, and the Duke, who
always travelled with several dozen copies to give
away to acquaintances and those interested in
spiritualism, gave it to him.
Nigel went to Eckenbaden* and a whole year
passed. The Byronic fire had been burned out in
the Bessarabian adventure, and in the sufferings
afterward, and he seemed content to rest for a time
in obscurity. And then, too, he had read Nigel
and he felt, after reading it, that he, too, might be
the laughing-stock of Europe if he reappeared.
J 59
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
There was something ludicrous in having died
publicly an heroic death and in having communi-
cated from the other world, only to reappear safe
and sound. And so a second year passed and a third,
and he began to grow accustomed to being dead.
He even came in a way to enjoy it. And the Duke
came presently almost to believe that his son was
really dead and to take up once more his interest in
spiritualism. It had been somewhat dashed for a
time. And in the end, the father and son came to a
silent agreement. Nigel was to remain dead so long
as the Duke was alive.
I had these details from Nigel’s cousin, Margaret
Nickleham.
And then at last after thirty years the Duke died,
and Mrs. Winterbottom, Miss Wadleigh-Nipham,
and Professor Potts found they had been cruelly
deceived.
The man with the dispatch-case was the Win-
tringham family solicitor, and the fast-looking gen-
tleman with the red face was the brother who had
married Miss Mazie Dare of the Gaiety. Together
it took them two days to persuade ‘Mr. Jones’ to
return to life, but at last they succeeded. The Duke
of Wintringham, accompanied by his brother and
his solicitor and his two poodles, left on the third
day for England.
160
NIGEL
Professor Potts had discovered Madame Venturini
in an hotel in the town and made all the arrange-
ments for a seance. But it never took place. The
three of them had not the face to go through with
it. In order to save their dignity with the scented
medium, they told her they were called back to
England, and left before their cures were finished ;
so it ended by my being left alone with Frau Bock-
Under in the vast and echoing Grand Wilhelmina
Hotel and Sanatorium.
4
When I came back the following year, I feared
that I should again pass the four weeks ip solitude.
But Frau Bocklander cheered me by saying that my
old friends were returning. There had btjen a slight
change. They were returning as Professor and Mrs.
Potts and Miss Wadleigh-Nipham. I received the
news with thanks and turned toward the garden.
The clock in the Frauenkirche was striking ten, and
there on the terrace above the town appeared what
could only be a phantom. It was ‘Mr. Jones*
walking up and down with his two poodles.
I turned to Frau Bocklander. ‘But you didn’t
tell me the Duke of Wintringham was here,’
‘It’s not the Duke of Wintringham,’ she said,
l 161
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
looking at me sharply. ‘It’s Mr. Jones. He's come
back to stay.’
And then I understood. He had been dead too
long. He couldn’t bear returning to life.
JUSTICE
i
T he specks of dust danced in the long sunbeams
that fell across the dim courtroom. The judge
cleared his throat. He was a lean man, bald and
with a not unkindly face, but impersonal, too in-
tellectual, too Calloused.
‘The case of the People against Michael Rooney !’
The shuffling among the spectators died away.
The clerk, a tired old man with long, drooping
moustaches, fumbled among his papers, rattling a
little, as if he, too, were desiccated and dusty. The
district attorney, handsome, Jewish, urbane, in-
telligent, sat down by a table to run Us pencil
through the copy of the indictment. Hit manner
spoke for him : ‘One among so many. I’ve forgotten
the circumstances of this one.’ He was a little
bored, a little weary. He was not in the least
interested in sending Michael Rdoney off to prison.
Below us - the twelve good men and true - sat
the defendant Michael Rooney and his attorney.
‘Gentlemen,’ continued the judge, in his pojite
incisive, colourless voice. ‘The defendant Michael
Rooney is charged with grand larceny in the first
degree. The case should not require much time.
163
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
It is a simple one. The evidence is simple. There
are no complications. The defendant Michael
Rooney is charged with having acted as lookout
during the robbery of one Patrick Love on the night
of June 24.’ The judge rustled the papers before
him. ‘He was indicted jointly with one Willie
Fallon, who has already pleaded guilty to the charge
of grand larceny in the first degree.’
Feet shuffled nervously. The district attorney
rose languidly. You liked him. He inspired con-
fidence, a sense of impartiality. He addressed the
FT*
Did any of us know him or the attorney for the
defendant ? Did any of us feel in any way pre-
judiced against himself, or the defendant, or the
defendant’s attorney ? Did we understand that
an indictment implied no guilt whatever ? That
it was simply a means of bringing a charge ? We
had a moment to answer if we had any answer to
make. Silence. The machine rolled over us.
I examined myself*. I was prejudiced against the
attorney for the defendant. I knew this. I could
not say so in court. I had never seen him before.
There must have been others among the twelve
men who felt dimly the same prejudice. The man
was repulsive. He sat, like a toad, like a crawling
thing you might find under a stone - oily, obsequious,
164
JUSTICE
with an air of maddening pomposity. He scratched
a miserable existence by being appointed to defend
unfortunate men who had no money to pay counsel.
He hung about the court waiting for the judge to
throw him a bone. A despicable character, whom
it was impossible to respect. A shyster lawyer !
Lawyers were bad enough, with all their tricks,
but a shyster lawyer !
Did we understand that an indictment implied
no guilt whatever ? That it was simply a means of
bringing a charge f
I understood that. No doubt the other eleven
did. Yet ? In the back of my mind, in some region
beyond my control, a little voice kept saying, ‘There
must be something in it. A jury believed enough of
the story to bring a charge. It can’t be false al-
together.’ I instructed that portion of my mind
to be still. It would not be still. *
I am, I suppose, a man of average intelligence,
but I could not still the voice. About me in the
jury box were men less intelligent, men whose minds
were little better than those of children. Men whose
minds were full of prejudices, of racial hatred, of
a thousand bitter, twisted convictions. How many
of them were like that ? Who could say ? Some
of them certainly were. To some of them, that
little voice must be shouting.
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
The attorney for the defendant began the same
set of questions. Again a slight pause in which to
answer. The machine rolled on.
‘I am satisfied,’ the toad told the judge. (I must
not feel prejudiced against that man.)
The machine paused for a moment. More rustling
of papers. A consultation. I fell to regarding the
defendant Michael Rooney.
He sat with his cap in his hands, his eyes fixed
upon a scrap of paper on the table before him. He
was an ordinary youth, like a million others. He
wore a shabby blue suit, bought on Eighth Avenue,
high-waisted and fastened with a single button.
His hair was dark, reddish. His hands large, clearly
the hands of one who did manual labour. There
was nothing unusual about him save perhaps the
breadth of shoulders and the faint swagger they
carried.
He raised his head, looking straight at us, and I
knew suddenly that there was something different
about Michael Rooney. He was not at all like a
million others. What was the difference, the dis-
tinction ? The smouldering light in the blue eyes ?
The slightly pointed tip of the ears f That in-
discernible air of swagger ? Impossible to say. Yet
the impression was vivid, unmistakable. There was
a spark . . . something . . . which only a few men
1 66
JUSTICE
have in this civilised day. Who can say what it
was ? What marked him ? What placed him ? A
gift of life which only a few men have ? I think it
was a sense of wildness and freedom.
On the table before him was a little spot of
sunlight.
Amid a rustling of papers the machine was
moving again.
‘The circumstances of the case are simple,* began
the prosecuting attorney. ‘On the night of June
24th, a police officer saw the defendant Michael
Rooney and the co-defendant Willie Fallon enter
a doorway with one Patrick Love, who, it appeared,
had been drinking heavily. A moment later he says
he saw the defendant Michael Rodney step out
from the hallway into the street and look up and
down. Then the officer crossed the street and
entered the hallway. He discovered the co-defen-
dant Willie Fallon with one hand in the trousers
pocket of the complainant Patrick Love. At his
approach, Fallon withdrew his hafcd and two quarters
fell to the floor. The defendant Michael Rooney,
so the police officer says, was standing by. As the
case progresses you will hear the stories of t the
various witnesses.’
The case progressed.
The complainant, Patrick Love, stepped into the
167
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
box. He was a man of perhaps forty, seared,
bloated, savage in appearance, resembling a baboon.
He was a creature, scarcely a man, unmistakably at
the lowest rung of the human ladder. He spoke
with an appalling brogue. He did not understand
the simplest questions. The questions had to be
repeated again and again. The machine terrified
him. He had lost his wits.
He was a labourer, he said. He- had been in the
city about five weeks. Before that he worked in
St. Louis. He went where he could find work.
Sometimes a strike-breaker. On the day of the
robbery he had been to Celtic Park to see the foot-
ball matches. He had many drinks, so many he
couldn’t remember the number. At seven in the
evening he had gone to the neighbourhood of Ninth
Avenue and Forty-ninth Street, where he heard
there was a dance. No, he never got to the dance.
He stopped at a saloon and had more drinks. How
many ? He did not know. He could remember
nothing save that he* left the saloon and started up
Ninth Avenue. He had in his pocket, he believed,
seventeen dollars. No, he wasn’t sure, but he
remembered changing a twenty-dollar bill some
time during the day. Did he know the defendant
Michael Rooney ? No. Had he ever seen him
before ? No. Had he seen him on the night of
168
JUSTICE
the robbery ? He might have. He couldn’t say.
He remembered nothing.
The prosecuting attorney questioned and the
attorney for the defence protested questions, he
asked that they be struck out. The stupidity of
the man ! Even a layman could see his protests
were idiotic. He was a toad trying to halt a steam-
roller. The judge, curt, dignified, denied his pro-
tests. Each time the shyster spoke people noticed
him, and that fed his sense of importance. Each
time he rose to protest, he was for a second at least
the centre of attention. (I must not feel prejudiced
against the man.)
He, too, questioned the complainant Patrick
Love. The story remained the same. He had been
robbed, the money taken from his pocket. He did
not know how, he did not know: when or he did
not know where. He was too drunk. The dust-
man might have swept him up and dumped him
into the river with no loss to anyone.
I looked again at the defendant Michael Rooney.
Did he know the complainant f Had he robbed
him ? Who could say ? Nothing in his face re-
vealed the truth, or the lack of truth. He sat
watching that speck of precious sunlight, crossing
the table before him, moving slowly away, slipping
down toward one leg of the table. The shoulders
169
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
remained squared, a little defiant in the face of
the machine.
Police officer Redmond stepped into the box.
Red-faced, hair en browse like the comb of a fighting-
cock. Tumed-up nose. Pale blue eyes. Awkward
manner in the face of the machine. He told his
story.
It followed closely the outline of the district
attorney. He had found in the pockets of the
defendant Rooney and the co-defendant Fallon the
total sum of one dollar and «tty-fiv* cents. To-
gether it was all they had. No, they could not
have taken more than that amount from the com-
plainant Patrick Love. It was all they had, both
of them, together. He was certain of the identity
of the defendant Rooney and the co-defendant
Fallon. He saw them enter the hallway with the
complainant Love between them. Yes, there were
other men standing near the doorway. Three or
four, he couldn’t be certain. No, he was sure that
the defendant Rooney had been implicated. He
wasn’t simply standing beside the doorway. The
time 1 The hour was ten minutes to two. ( I had
just happened to lode at my watch. 1 see it happen
from the opposite side of the avenue.’
I watched the face of Michael Rooney. He had
forgotten the fleeting sunbeam. He faced police
170
JUSTICE
officer Redmond boldly. The light in his Irish
eyes flamed a little higher. The shoulders squared
more defiantly. Not the proper attitude for a
prisoner. No cowering. Too much defiance. More
like a leopard shut up behind bars.
The machine moved on.
The defendant Michael Rooney took the stand.
With hand on the Bible, he swore the oath that
every witness swears and some of them must break,
since all cannot tell the truth. He sat down, still
twisting the cap in his hand. The light was still
in his eye. For a moment it dimmed, but instantly
flared up again. He did not cringe. His body
did not sag.
Yes. He was arrested at Ninish Avenue and
Forty-ninth Street. He was on his Way home. He
had taken a girl home from a dance and was passing
the corner when the officer arrested him. He lived
with his sister and brother-in-law. He did not
rob Patrick Love. He had never before seen the
co-defendant Willie Fallon. °Yes. He lived on
the same block with Fallon. He had lived there for
five years. And still did not know Fallon, who had
already pleaded guilty to the charge ? No. Had
never seen him until they wqre arrested together.
The name of the girl he was seeing home i Nellie
Rand. Where was she now ? Why was she not in
171
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
court ? She had moved away. He did not know
her new address. He had known her three years.
They met on a street-corner. Before she moved
away she had lived near the scene of the crime, a
block away.
I began to wonder. Nellie Rand ! Was she a
real person ? Was she a woman at all ? Was she
simply a symbol of all women ? Of street-comer
encounters ? The defendant Michael Rooney had
the air of a man who was death to the ladies. A
cock among hens . . . that free swagger, that sense
of wildness, that light in the eye. A man born to
live wildly. A man born free. I began to believe
that he was guilty. I also began to believe that it
made no difference.
The defendant Michael Rooney stuck to his
story. He had not stepped into the street. He had
not aided in the robbery of Patrick Love. He did
not know the co-defendant Willie Fallon.
Presently the machine had done with him. He
got down and went back to sit beside the toad.
Another pause, more rustling of papers.
I knew the town. I knew the block where
Michael Rooney lived. Rows of filthy brick houses,
fifteen people living in three rooms. Streets littered
with garbage, flying dust and old newspapers. Filth.
Sweat. Hardship. Poverty. Five years in that
172
JUSTICE
block where men and women, even children, fought
simply to live. Oh, yes. I knew it !
The machine was rolling again.
The co-defendant Willie Fallon stepped into the
box. He, too, swore to tell the truth, like the com-
plainant Patrick Love, the police officer Redmond,
the defendant Michael Rooney. He wore pants of
khaki, a blue shirt open at the throat. Tousled
brown hair. Blue eyes close together. A long nose.
Manner bewildered.
He had been on the corner on the night of the
arrest. He had picked the complainant Patrick
Love out of the gutter where he was lying in the
filth. He couldn’t walk, so he dragged him into
the hallway and propped him up on the lower step.
He could not remember quite clearly. He had been
drinking himself. He did remember loosening
Love’s collar. He could not remember having
robbed Love. He suppose he done it, if the police-
man said so.
There was a sudden halt.* The polite voice of
the judge interrupted the questioning. He said
that if Willie Fallon pleaded guilty only because
the police officer said he committed the crime, the
plea must be changed. A .man could not plead
guilty unless he knew that he had committed a
crime.
*73
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
‘Mr. Clerk, change the plea of the co-defendant
Willie Fallon to not; guilty.’
In the box the co-defendant Willie Fallon sat
wooden. Clearly it was all the same to him. He
didn’t understand any of it. He, too, had a lawyer
who made a living by hanging about court.
The questioning began again. No, he did not
know the defendant Michael Rooney. Had never
seen him up to the night of the arrest. He had
lived in the same block, but only a month. He
had been out of work for two weeks. He had been
out of work off and on ever since he got out of the
army. Why didn’t he rejoin ? Hell, nothing could
get him back into the army. He’d had enough of
that. Being knocked around.
‘That will do, Mr. Fallon/
The co-defendant Willie Fallon shuffled off, led
through a barred runway by a guard.
In his chair, the defendant Michael Rooney
sat upright, the cap clutched desperately in
his hands. He was* looking at the bit of paper.
The spot of sunlight was slipping away, gently,
easily.
One more witness. Giovanni Sardi. Blacksmith.
Character witness. Short, powerful, swarthy,
dressed for court in a Palm Beach suit and Panama
hat. Very broken in English.
174
JUSTICE
*A blacksmith, you say ?’ queried the judge with
a twinkle.
*Yes . . . blacksmith ... my card.’ He handed
the judge a card.
Wagon repairing ,’ read the judge to the court.
‘Iron work , etc! He leaned toward Giovanni Sardi.
‘You don’t shoe horses ?’
Sardi grinned. *No shoe horses.’
‘I’m glad of that. Then you’re not a real black-
smith. I’d hate to think of a real blacksmith in a
Palm Beach suit. Spoils the illusion. Spreading
chestnut tree ... all that.*
A compensating titter swept the courtroom.
Giovanni Sardi testified that the defendant
Michael Rooney worked for him as a helper. Four
years ago. Yes. Good fella . . . Good fella . . .
Everybody like him. Especially thegirl*.
The Palm Beach blacksmith, grinning, confused,
vanished.
Again a pause. A rustling of pipers. The wall
was closing in. *
The prosecuting attorney and the attorney for
the defence dispensed with summing up. Such a
simple case. No need for it. The judge tuyned
toward the twelve good men and true. The object
of the trial, he said, was to prove the innocence or
the guilt of the defendant Michael Rooney. The
*75
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
presumption, in our courts, was that a man was
innocent until proven guilty. We must remember
that. An indictment meant nothing, no indication
of guilt. Our problem was to determine who was
telling the truth. Was it probable that the defen-
dant Michael Rooney happened to be on that one
corner of all comers at the moment of the crime,
to which the co-defendant Willie Fallon had already
pleaded guilty - or, at least, said he must be guilty
if the police officer said he was. We must be satisfied
beyond a reasonable doubt. The law recognised no
degree of guilt. If the defendant Michael Rooney
stepped from the doorway to shield and protect
the co-defendant Willie Fallon, he was as guilty as
if he himself had taken the money from the pocket
of the intoxicated complainant Patrick Love. We
must remember that. The amount of money
changed in the indictment . . . the judge rustled
his papers . . . one dollar and sixty-five cents, had
nothing to do with the case. The charge was that a
man had been held up' and robbed in the night-time.
That was what made the affair serious. We must
not allow the so-called crime wave to influence
our judgment. If the defendant Michael Rooney
was innocent, he was innocent whether or not there
. *
was any crime wave.
He told us a great deal more. ... A list of things
176
JUSTICE
we must do or must not do in reaching a judgment.
The instructions seemed to carry an inverse meaning
... as if each one meant exactly the opposite of
■what the judge intended them to mean. The in-
dictment did carry an implication of guilt. We
must be influenced by the crime wave. It is not
dear. I cannot explain it. The speech was gently
cynical, ironic - unconsciously so, I have no doubt.
He must have said the same things so many times.
And at last, with a great shuffling of feet, we rose
and filed out. I saw the eyes of the defendant
Michael Rooney following us, wistfully. Again I
was thankful I was not in his shoes. He still clutched
the cap. The swagger had diminished a little. The
spot of glowing sunlight had slipped away, quite
to the edge of the table.
The twelve good men and true : were shut up
in a little room with a barred window at one end.
We sat in twelve chairs about a long table. The
room was bare. Nothing to distract our minds.
Pure justice was our goal. •
Silence. A thin, stooped, middle-sized man . . .
a clerk, no doubt . . . cleared his throat officiously.
‘Let’s get the business over. I’ve work to do.
It’s the first time I’ve missed an hour from the o'ffice
in ten years.’ *
‘To begin with,’ said I, ‘we might take a vote.’
m 1 77
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
The foreman stood up, plump, goggle-eyed,
kindly. ‘Gentlemen, how do we stand ?’
We stood evenly divided, six for conviction,
six for acquittal. I, with five others, remained
seated.
One of those standing, a big man with a bull-neck,
in a checked suit, glared at me . . . hard, as if I
were a criminal.
‘The fellow’s guilty as hell !’ he shouted. ‘Did
you see him cringing there in the box ? He couldn’t
look you in the eye. That’s the way you can tell
. . . every time!’
Michael Rooney had not cringed at all.
Another attacked the six seated jurors. A little
man, full of importance, with jowls and a furtive
eye. He spoke with a rich accent. I knew the sort.
Man of property. Cloak-and-suit business. Worked
his way up, by any sort of means.
‘It's our duty to act, gentlemen ... to protect
society. No one is more soft-hearted than me. But
if we let this fella go, there’ll only be more hold-ups,
more robberies. Think of what the fur trade has
lost in loft robberies alone. Something’s got to be
done. A fella ain’t safe to walk a block at night-
time. ' You remember the judge pointed out it
was night-time. It’s’our duty to send this fella
away.*
178
JUSTICE
I protested. I recalled to them what the judge
had said, how he had counselled us to be lair,
thoughtful.
One of those seated - a fat, good-natured old
fellow - supported me. ‘It’s a serious charge . . .
grand larceny in the first degree . . . next to mur-
der. They can give him a stiff sentence . . . five
or ten years.’
In the back of my mind a voice kept saying, *He’s
guilty. You know he’s guilty.’
A little insignificant man, one of those who had
asserted himself for conviction, found an opening.
He related a long and complicated story of the
perils of the streets at night-time. He worked in
the night-time. Every night the policeman on the
corner escorted him home because he said it wasn’t
safe. A lot of fellas like this Rooney running around
loose. You could tell by the way the fella swaggered
that he was a bad one. In the box he was defiant.
Not at all the proper attitude. What chance had a
little fella in the night-time against a guy like
Rooney. It was an age-old cry of vengeance, the
little fellow against the full-grown man.
The clerk who had not missed an hour from his
office in ten years looked* at his watch. He was
eager to be back in his chains. To be free made
him terrified and nervous.
*79
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
‘We might take another vote,* suggested the mild
foreman.
This time only two of us remained seated, the
irresponsible fat man and myself.
‘They haven’t proved anything,* I persisted, ‘not
a thing. It’s pretty hard to send a fellow away on
such evidence.’
The bull-necked gentleman turned on me savagely.
‘Ain’t you got any intelligence ? It’s plain as
day!’
In his wake the cloak-and-suit business followed
in the attack. He was polite, oily. ‘Just lode at
that fella’s face. Ain’t it enough ? Maybe some
day you’ll be robbed, eh. It ain’t safe, I tell you.
It ain’t safe.’
In the back of my mind a voice kept saying,
‘What’s the use ? If you disagreed there would be
another trial. They’d only convict him. Anyway,
you know he’s guilty.’ I kept seeing things, too.
Michael Rponey’s block and the kids in it that never
escaped until they died.
The anxious clerk interrupted. ‘That other
fellow . . . Fallon. You heard what he said about
the army. A fine way to talk. No patriotism. No
co-operation. That’s the kind they are.’
‘You could see Fallon was trying to shield him,*
added the gentleman in the checked suit. ‘Anybody
180
JUSTICE
could see that. Saying he didn’t know Rooney. A
lot of bunk !’
The foreman’s monotonous voice again. ‘Gentle-
men, we might take another vote.’
This time I was deserted by my fat friend. He
stood up. They waited. I was the ordinary citizen.
Slowly I, too, got to my feet.
The cloak-and-suit business heaved a sigh of relief.
*Well, that’s done. Gentlemen, I congratulate you.
We haff done our duty.’
The little man regarded his watch. ‘It only took
us ten minutes,’ he said. ‘Maybe the judge wouldn’t
like such a quick verdict.’
‘Maybe we’d better wait a little while,’ said the
cloak-and-suit man.
‘Sure,’ said the complacent fat gentleman. ‘We
might enjoy another smoke before going in.’
So we sat and smoked and talked of the crime
wave for ten more minutes. We had to create with
the judge an impression of our profundity, our
deep deliberation. *
When we entered, the courtroom was still. We
took our places. The roll was called.
‘Michael Rooney, face the jury and hear the
verdict !’
The defendant Michael Rooney was brought
before us. He looked at us squarely. His knees, I
181
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
think, trembled a little. Hi* face grew a shade
more pale. But the light did not go out of his eyes,
nor the defiance from his broad shoulders. He
turned his cap round and round, awkwardly. Some-
where in the background the attorney for the
defence regarded us with an oily smile. He was
rubbing his hands all the while. His manner said
with oily confidence, 'Gentlemen, don’t think I’m
in sympathy with the prisoner. I’m appointed to
defend him. I’m a good honest citizen . . . one of
the best !’
'Foreman of the jury, hare you reached a ver-
dict ?’
‘Yes, your Honour.’
I looked away from Michael Rooney. He seemed
to accuse me ... of what ? Of doing my duty.
Simply that. Nothing more. Of betraying him to
those other men, the nervous clerk, the bully, the
insignificant fellow, the cloak-and-suit business - to
all the ones who were not what he was and hated
him for it.
'Do you find the defendant Michael Rooney
guilty or not guilty of grand larceny in the first
degree ?’
*Your honour ’ - the voice of the foreman trembled
a little - 'we find him guilty of grand larceny in the
first degree.’
182
JUSTICE
My eyes, beyond control, sought Michael Rooney.
He stared at us with the air of a stoic, as if he did
not see us at all. Then, slowly his shoulders drooped.
The cap fell to the floor. The light, which had
persisted through everything, went suddenly out of
his eyes.
We had killed Michael Rooney. The thing which
was Michael Rooney, the essence of him, the fire,
the freedom, the swagger, the light in his Irish eyes.
This we had slain. For stealing ... if he did
steal it . . . one dollar and sixty-five cents from a
besotted animal, we had killed a rare thing in an
abominable civilised world.
The whole affair was over and finished in an hour
and ten minutes. One must hurry, ; So many cases.
Five years . . . Ten years ! Michael Rooney
after that ? No, it was better not to think of it, for
it was the end of Michael Rooney, ■
The judge in his polite, incisive voice dismissed
us, without comment. I heard Michael Rooney
answering his questions. ‘First conviction. . . .
Twenty-five years old. . . . Parents dead. . . . Single
• )
• * •
Twenty-five plus ten. . . . Twenty-five plus five.
One dollar and sixty-five cents.
The machine began to roll ’on. ‘Bertha Fradkin
to the bar !’
183
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Curious, I waited for a moment. Bertha Fradldn
was a bedraggled woman of perhaps thirty-five, in
an ill-fitting tan suit. She had the face and the
eyes of a moron. They were sentencing her. I
heard that cold, polite voice of the judge, a voice
like the voice of a machine.
'Bertha Fradldn, I sentence you to life imprison-
ment.’
There was a curious empty silence and the muffled,
sickening sound of a groan and a body crumpling
upon the floor. It was her fourth offence.
I went out of the room. I had served the state
and done my duty. I must forget the experience
as quickly as possible. Life is too short to brood
over things.
184
THE LETTER OF A ROMANTIC
Fontainebleau.
D ear Elenor,
I have not written to you in seven years,
and I am writing now not because I have anything
to say, but because the mood is on me.
It is the triste season here in Fountainebleau
when the palace is empty and the old carp swim
like ghosts beneath the carpet of dead leaves on
the great pond. The town is empty and you can
walk for miles along the allies of the forest without
seeing a soul or hearing a sound, not even a bird,
for there are no birds in the forest of Fontainebleau.
It is a Fountainebleau you have never seen, in
January, where one goes to be alone fot a day or two.
All the afternoon until twilight I have been
wandering about the palace with an old guide who
has been a friend of mine since I came here as a
boy on the grand tour more than forty years ago.
He takes me into closed, forgotten, forlorn comers
of the palace where others have never penetrated.
Somehow it gives the palace a kind of reality for*me
as if I looked into the past and taw all its ghosts in
a way not permitted to others.
185
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
The glamour has clung to my damp clothes like
the scent of rotting leaves in the forest where
Francis the First led all the court to hunt. It has
dimmed, even annihilated, all the dreariness of this
cold, pretentious, vulgar little hotel salon where I
sit writing. The glamour makes me forget all the
machine-made chairs and imitation tapestry and
factory-turned cornices. It is the salon of a shabby
little hotel without any beauty save in its name.
They call it the Pavilion Dor£e. The Pavilion Dor6e.
What a lovely name for a place with a room like this !
Let me describe it to you. There is an ornate
ebony piano which is hung with ball fringe and
makes atrocious sounds (I have tried it). There are
three muddy paintings of the forest in autumn, done,
I think, by the proprietor’s daughter ; and four or
five pieces of furniture in the gilt and sateen of
Louis Philippe, and on a hideous painted mantel-
piece, also adorned with yards of ball fringe, there
is a doll dressed as Marguerite at the spinning-
wheel covered by a glass dome. The wallpaper was
designed by a madman with layer upon layer of
funeral wreaths printed in bloody magenta. The
very inkstand of imitation bronze is a writhing and
twisting monstrosity. I am too old, Elenor, to ignore
such a room, but old enough to have the patience
to bear it. At least, I am alone here.
186
THE LETTER OF A ROMANTIC
Outside in the slow rain there is an old hunting
dog who keeps baying and baying as if he saw some-
where far off in the shadows of the encircling forest
the ghosts of those other dogs who hunted there four
centuries ago. I was thinking to-day what a sight
it must have been with the hounds swarming into
the oval court of the palace on their return from a
hunt, surrounded in the light of torches by all the
glittering court - the torches and the hounds, the
colour and the glitter and the sound of metal
striking metal as the horses tossed their heads. All
this beneath the eyes of the ladies who looked down
on the spectacle from the long open gallery. The
shadows dancing on the grey and rose walls of the
palace. ...
I am beginning to feel old, Elenor, and more senti-
mental than ever. I’m having a debauch of roman-
ticism. I don’t get on with this new generation.
I can hear you smiling and saying, 'Here is John being
literary again.’ Sometimes I think I ought to have
been a writer. I’d have enjoyed it. Do you re-
member when I used to write poetry ? In those days
Browning and Tennyson were great poets, though
I’m told there are some who don’t think them great
shakes in this day. Nobody writes on great themes
any more. They’re all small mincing themes full of
'pity and irony’ . . . as if it were ever difficult to be
187
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
ironic. Well, times change and the mark of the
generation sticks. We’re marked when we’re young.
Still, I can’t think that life has changed much. I
can’t quite believe in all the sordidness and tragedy
and sex of these youngsters. In the long run, life
is a pretty cheerful affair and most of us come to the
end of it easily and happily. Isn’t that so ? Your life
has been pleasant, and mine. And think of our
friends, the boys and girls we grew up with. No, life
isn’t tragic and bitter, and if it is, why should we go
on writing that it is ? That’s where the romantics
are right in making something better than life. Some
would say that because I’ve never had to work and have
never married that I’ve run away from life. At least,
it’s always been for me a happy, romantic existence.
When I came in from walking in the rainy twilight,
I said to myself, ‘What a pity it is that I haven’t
someone here who would enjoy all this as I’m en-
joying it !’ I suppose it’s a sign of old age when one
begins to like resorts out of season. I thought, ‘Well,
if there is no one here to enjoy it with me, I will
write to someone. There is nothing else for me to do
in the long evening alone in the Pavilion Dor6e.’
So that’s why I have written to you -because I
thought that you were the best person in the world to
have here with me. And then it occurred to me that
it was your birthday.
188
THE LETTER OF A ROMANTIC
And now, since I’ve begun this letter, I find that
after all I’m not alone in the hotel. I’ve just heard
voices. There are two people dining in the room
beyond the salon - a man and a woman, and they
have brought with them a gramophone. Imagine
that ! Bringing a gramophone to Fontainebleau in
the triste season. The thing has begun to scratch and
shriek, drowning out the sound of the old hunting
dog baying in the rain to the spectral hounds of the
forest. It is one of those jazz tunes. I think in Paris
they call it, ‘Yes, sir ! That’s my baby.’ How bored
they must be with each other to bring a gramophone
down to dinner !
And now it’s stopped abruptly, cut off in the very
midst. The woman, it seems, doesn’t fancy the tune.
From the sounds, I should say they were our country
people, Americans of the sort which gives all of us a
bad name outside our own country. The woman has
just cried out, ‘My God ! Why must you play that
damned thing ? You know how my nerves are to-night!’
The man hasn’t answered her. He seems to have
humoured her silently, by changing the disk. They’re
playing Tosti’s ‘Good-bye.’ It is wailing away at a
frightful rate -
Falling leaves and fading flowers.
Shadows falling on you and me,
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
It's strange, but something in the woman’s voice
made me think suddenly of Isabel ; not the sound
of it, for her voice was always beautiful and this is
the voice of a common woman who drinks too much
whisky. It’s odd, but this is the second time to-day
that I’ve thought of Isabel when she’s been for-
gotten for years. Lord ! How many years ? Fifteen.
Twenty. Perhaps more. She may be dead for all
I know. Memory plays strange tricks. This morning
at the palace I had a sudden feeling that I had seen
her somewhere to-day quite close at hand, as if she
had passed me in the street without my quite recog-
nizing her. It may have been that I passed someone
who resembled her. Faces have strange resemblances.
I’ve just remembered that you’re the same age as
Isabel, and that this, too, must be her birthday. You
used to celebrate on the same day in the old house
on Murray Hill.
What has become of her ? I remember her as I saw
her on the night she ran off with that fellow Preston.
Ah, you were there,' " too. You must have the same
memory of her, though you may have seen her since.
I’ve never seen her, though I heard she was in
Peking just before I arrived seven years ago. It’s
only lately that I’ve been able to think of her and of
how much I was in love with her. Before now it
always hurt me too much. That’s why I always
190
THE LETTER OF A ROMANTIC
avoided meeting her. I could never forget her run-
ning off with him. It’s so long ago now that it all
seems quite beautiful and something to be thankful
for. It’s almost as if she’d joined the procession of
ghosts that haunt the old corridors of the palace.
She was a beauty, with her dark hair and blue eyes
and that spoiled, quick, bad-tempered way of hers.
Ah, Elenor, I was in love with her. She could
have had me on any terms.
(They have started the damned scratchy thing
again in the next room. I think they must keep the
thing going to escape speaking to each other.)
She could have been happy - Isabel, I mean - but
she always had to be making a sensation. Perhaps Pm
just a prig. Perhaps she is happy. She always had to
be noticed by people. She might have married
Preston decently, but she preferred to elope with
him. And she might have been happy with him, but
she preferred a divorce in days when divorces were
still sensational. It’s odd how the years make you
see things differently. I was in* love with her once.
She was the only woman I’ve ever loved. But now
I can’t help thanking God for all the trouble I
escaped because she thought me dull . . . how
much trouble and notoriety !
What has become of her ? *1116 last I heard was
when she ran off from her second husband with
191
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Murchison, who seemed a sober enough fellow and
not the sort to leave a wife and children for a woman
of forty. Always a sensation. ‘The beautiful Isabel
so-and-so eloped, etc. . . Life, it seems, has never
been exciting enough for her.
And now Murchison’s life has been ruined and
he’s lost. I suppose they’re together somewhere.
He was an honourable sort, as I remember him, and
by now she must be too old to indulge in any more
escapades. I suppose he’s sticking to her for the sake
of something that is dead. They were mixed up in
some sort of yachting scandal in England about ten
years ago> I think that’s the last time she’s been in
the papers. She must be old and weary of sensations
by now.
The music has stopped again in the next room and
they’ve begun to quarrel. Apparently, it’s some sort
of a rendezvous. Thank God, they’re not people
that I know ! I suppose they think themselves alone
in the Pavilion Dorde. I've coughed and dropped a
book on the floor -- a heavy volume of Saint-Simon -
but the woman is in a kind of frenzy and not to be
stopped by the mere presence of a stranger. She’s
screaming at him and he is silent. She’s just cried
out, ‘I’ll leave you ! Why don’t you say something
instead of sitting there like a deaf mute ? I’ve
ruined myself for you and all I’ve had is misery,
192
THE LETTER OF A ROMANTIC
misery, misery !’ The man answered her, ‘For God’s
sake, leave me and stop talking about it ! Leave me
in peace !’ She’s gone into hysterics. I think the
wretched creature is drunk.
I'm going up to my room. I can't stand it any
longer.
An hour later.
I didn’t escape. I was gathering up my things
when the pair of them came through the room,
moving across it against the pattern of bloody-
magenta funeral wreaths. He was carrying a portable
gramophone and some disks. I shouldn’t have looked
up or taken any notice of them, but the man paused
and, seeming not in the least put out by what he
knew I must have heard, asked me what time it was.
He was a tall man, with a lean, weary face and grey
hair, with the look of a gentleman. I took out my
watch and silently held the face of it toward him,
and as I did so I noticed that the woman had halted
in the doorway to see why he had not followed her.
You could see at once why she had stopped there on
the threshold. She was afraid that he might escape
from her.
She was a tall woman, with a figure that once must
have been fine before she had grown heavy with
dissipation. She had a sagging chin and that hard,
193
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
worried look of a woman who had clung desperately
to her youth. The ravaged face was painted, crudely,
as if she had done it while intoxicated, and her hair
was of that dyed, unreal shade of mahogany-red. I
should have turned away, but there was something
about her that arrested me. She stood drawn up
unsteadily against the doorway, with a wild and
grotesque dignity, as if she were commanding me.
Clearly she was thinking, ‘Look at me. You are a
man. You will seldom see such another beauty . . .’
as if she had never understood that she was nothing
any longer but a raddled shrew. And then all at once
I was sick, really sick, Elenor. There wasn’t any
doubt. The man was Murchison and the woman was
Isabel. Mercifully she was too drunk to recognise me.
Three days have passed since I left off writing.
I couldn’t write any more. I couldn’t sleep. All
I could do was think, and so I walked the streets
all night in the rain and when I came in in the morn-
ing the hunting dog was still howling, dismally and
monotonously.
I’ve just come from the cemetery that lies on the
edge of the forest. There were only two of us there
beside the Anglican Rector - Murchison and myself.
We covered the raw red earth with a blanket of
flowen. I don’t think we said twenty words to each
194
THE LETTER OF A ROMANTIC
other. What was there to sa y except, ‘I knew her
when she was a girl/ and you couldn’t well say that
with the memory of the drunken harridan leaning
against the doorway of that terrible salon in the
Pavilion Dor6e.
They found her in the kitchen in the morning in
a pool of blood. She had cut her throat. She died,
you see, as she had always lived, in a sensation. She
would have liked a great story of her romantic love
and death. But Murchison and I cheated her out of
that. We’ve hushed things up. We can at least
spare her family this last blow.
I should never have sent this letter and I never
would have sent it to anyone but you, because I
knew you’d be interested and would understand.
I’m trusting you to keep the sectet along with
Murchison and me. I can never conie to Fontaine-
bleau again. I can’t help regretting that, even
though it seems selfish and small. I did love it. And
poor Murchison. I don’t know what he’ll do. I’m
taking him back to Paris with mb.
It’s things like this that make me regret the fact
that I never took up writing seriously. How right
was the man who said that truth is stranger than
fiction !
I can’t write any more now. I’m still feeling it too
deeply. And again I beg of you to say nothing of
195
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
this to anyone, because - well, because Isabel was one
of us once. She grew up with us. She used to cele-
brate her birthday with you in the old house on
Murray Hill. Who would have thought that such
things would happen to her ?
Remember me to George, and if you come to
Paris this summer, let me know. I have an exquisite
little place at Chantilly. I should love to entertain
you both. We could so enjoy ourselves discussing
old times.
Walter.
196
AUNT MILL Y CROSSES THE BAR
I t’s too bad you were late, Etta. If you hadn't
been, we wouldn’t have had to sit way back here
in the alcove with all those palms in front of us.
I didn’t mean to be late, only that Hofbein girl
who comes in to look after little Herman was late.
He’d finished his bottle before she got there. Any-
way, Cousin Horace otta have saved us a seat up
front.
Yes, it’s just like Horace.
Is little Herman still on Horton’i Food ?
That’s what made me late. Yes. He’s still on
Horton’s Food.
It never agreed with Hazel. She always spit it
up, sooner or later. Or else it worked the other way.
It sits fine on little Herman. , ; . No, you take
the gilt chair, Irma. I’ll take the horsehair. Since
Herman was born I haven’t been able to sit on any-
thing hard. Anyhow, my sit-upon is bigger than
yours.
I must say Cousin Horace might have saved a
place for us. We’re her own nieces, after all.
Yes, especially after Aunt Milly and I had just
made up our difference before she died.
*97
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
But Horace wants to keep us in the background.
It’s just like him, always making up to Aunt Milly.
I’ll bet he was there when she made her will, stand-
ing over her shoulder and dictating it.
I must say that if I take the trouble to go to a
funeral I want to sit somewhere near the casket.
I wonder if we could ask Mrs. Simpkins to move
that palm a little. . . . Mrs. Simpkins . . . Mrs.
Simpkins . . . Pardon me, but would you mind
pushing that palm just a little to one side. . . There.
. . . Yes, that’s enough, thank you. We couldn’t
see anything.
Thank you, Mrs. Simpkins. . . . You can see we
weren’t treated very well by Cousin Horace, Mrs.
Simpkins. We’re nieces of the deceased, after all.
. . . There. . . . That’s much better. . . . Now
we can see perfectly. . . . My, doesn’t she look
natural i
Yes, so calm and young, too. You’d never think
her kidneys had been like that for ten years. There
are my flowers over there . . . just over there, by
her feet . . . the calla lilies and swansonias.
Swansonia is a pretty name.
Yes, I thought of that. I didn’t send roses or
carnations. They’re ,so ordinary.
I disagree, Irma. 'X think roses and carnations go
with funerals, somehow. I sent carnations. . . .
108
AUNT MILLY CROSSES THE BAR
Those are mine . . . the red ones . . . just there
under the casket plate.
The blanket of roses. I wonder who sent that ?
It was the Eastern Star. They always send a
blanket of roses when one of the lodge members die.
My, it’s just as well to know that. What would
you do if two blankets of roses were sent to your
funeral ? Someone would have their feelings hurt.
There’s old Mrs. Cosgrove seated right in the front
row where the family ought to be. She always takes
the best seat.
She must come before the doors are open.
Oh, Irma ! You oughtn’t to make jokes on an
occasion like this.
I wonder when they’re going to begin. It’s almost
three now, and Horace said it was to be at two-
thirty. >
Aunt Milly was always late.
You’re just the limit !
Is there to be a quartet ?
I’m sure I don’t know. Horace didn’t tell me
anything.
I hope they’ll sing ‘Crossing the Bar.’
Don’t talk so loud, Irma. People are looking
around.
Is that tall man the new mdrtician ?
The new what ?
199
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Mortician. Haven’t you seen the card in his
window, saying you mustn’t call him an undertaker.
He’s a mortician.
Oh, undertaker ! Yes, that’s Mr. Krantz. Isn’t
he good-looking ?
A bit sour-looking.
Of course, just now. That’s his professional man-
ner. He’s gotta do that. He ain’t really sour. You
ought to know him when he’s not on a case.
You know him ?
Do I know him ? My, yes. In the evenings when
he hasn’t a case, he comes over to our house to play
euchre. But I didn’t know he calls himself a morti-
cian.
Yes, he calls himself a mortician.
Hmm ! Mortician. . . . Well, I’ve learned some-
thing new.
He has a sympathetic face.
Yes, he’s very sympathetic. You must come over
some evening and meet him.
I’d love to. . . . They must be beginning soon,
now. . . . This chair is hard as Tophet !
Etta, can you reach that pin in the middle of
my back. It’s come undone.
Turn round a bit. . . . There ! I have it.
I told Homer wheft he bought it for me that it
ought to have a patent clasp.
200
AUNT MILLY CROSSES THE BAR
There’* Cousin Emma coming in. Nobody ever
invites her to anything but funerals.
I don’t wonder. She’s such a complainer. You’d
think nobody in the world ever had liver complaint
before.
Do you remember how she went on when she had
gallstones ?
Do I ? Did you know she had one of the stones
made up in a pin for her husband to wear ?
My, she’s aged !
Ah, there’s the rector.
It’s funny about Aunt Milly joining the Episcopal
church.
Well, between us, Etta, she was always a little
stuck up, especially after she came into Grandpa
Schoessel’s money. ■'
I never liked that Doctor Corning^
He’s white and soft like a worm. And he reads
the service like Mrs. Milliken singing an anthem.
We mustn’t talk so loud now. They’re beginning.
No. . . . *
I hate the smell of tuberoses, Etta.
‘ I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the
Lord. . . .’ 4
That’s a pretty line. ... I always like that.
Yes, it makes you believe in the Hereafter.
201
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Bat I prefer the Baptist service. It’s more
simple.
And more spontaneous.
Yes, I think there’s nothing like spontaneousness
at a time like this.
‘For a thousand years in Thy sight are hut as
yesterday. . . .*
Look at Cousin Emma crying.
What has she got to cry about. If she was like
me, with five children. . . .
* Seeing that is past as a watch in the night. . . .*
There’s the quartet, Irma. They’re gonna have
a quartet.
Good ! I’m glad there’s gonna be a quartet.
Maybe they’ll sing ‘Crossing the. Bar.*
‘So teach us to number our days that we may apply
our hearts unto wisdom .’
Oh, Etta ! Remind me to ask you something as
soon as we get out !
I will.
Look at HoraceYsour face.
He looks as if he’d made sure of all the money.
She always promised me the parlour suite.
* Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God ,
in His wise providence , to take out of this world the
soul of our deceased sister .*
It’s too bad they didn’t have the service in Mr.
202
AUNT MILLY CROSSES THE BAR
Krantz’s new mortuary chapel. It would have
been the first service to open the chapel.
And we wouldn’t have been stuck in an alcove
behind all these palms, where we couldn’t see a
thing.'
'The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ , and the
Love of God , and the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost be
with us all for evermore. Amen*
Don’t forget to remind me !
Now they’re going to sing.
Quartet music is lovely, I think . . . just lovely.
They always ought to have a quartet at a funeral.
Who’s that, Etta, sitting over there by Aunt
Milly*s head ? It can’t be one of the Des Moines
connections . . . not Ralph Saunders.
It looks to me like Ralph Saunders,'
Well, I never ! Of all things ! They say he’s going
to be made head of the bank over there.
I shouldn’t have thought he’d have come all the
way from Boonville. .
Maybe he thinks he’s mentioned in the will.
It would be just like Aunt Milly to leave every-
thing to a home for cats and dogs. I’ve heard of
such things.
Shh ! . . . I want to listen to the singing. . .* .
It's this part I think is just lovely. . . . 'Twilight
and Evening Star’ . . . and the part, too, about the
103
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Pilot. . . . Have you got a handkerchief, Etta 1
.... I can never think to bring a handkerchief.
. . . . Thank you. There. ... I ahyays think
there's nothing like a good cry . . . nothing ... it
does you good. If I should die suddenly, Etta, will
yon remember that I want a quartet to sing ‘Crossing
the Bar.'
Don’t talk such nonsense !
I can’t help it. ‘In the midst of life we are in
death !’ That’s a beautiful line, I think. It makes
you humble. . . .
Don't get hysterical, Irma.
When I think about leaving all the children and
little Herman, not yet off his Horton’s Food. . . .
You’re not going to die. ... I must say Mr.
Krantz is a fine-looking man.
Don’t forget to remind me, Etta !
There now, they’re finished. ... I must say I’m
sorry, but we can get out into the air. Get up,
Irma ! Let’s get down near the head of the line, so
we won’t have to be' the last. Go ahead ! Just push
past Cousin Emma.
Here comes Horace, the oily hypocrite !
I’m surprised that he’d bother to take notice of us 1
How-de-do, Cousin Horace l Yes, everything went
off well, except that it began too late.
Yes, it’ll be dark before we get to the cemetery.
204
AUNT MI LLY CROSSES THE BAR
Oh, eo we’re in the third cab . . . both of us ?
Thank you !
I tried to be cold to him.
You were fine, Etta. You’d have froze an iceberg.
I'd like to have asked him when they’re going to
read the will, but I thought it wouldn’t be in good
taste.
No, it wouldn’t have been in good taste . . . not
with her not cold yet.
Why are they so slow ?
Ah, yes, those are my carnations, right there by
your feet.
She does look natural, doesn’t she ?
It’s surprising how natural they can make people
look, nowadays.
Yes, I always say Science is a wonderful thing
.... a wonderful thing.
But I guess Mr. Krantz is pretty good.
One of the best !
She’s being buried in her mauve satin.
Yes, she always told me she’d kept it all these
years to be buried in.
It’s a shame to bury that cameo pin with her.
Yes, I can never see the use of burying good
jewelry.
That’s Horace again. It’s lus doing. I don’t sup-
pose he’ll miss a cameo pin out of all she’s left him.
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AWAKE AND REHEARSE
There ! My, it's good to be in the air again after
all those flowers.
He said the third cab, didn't he ?
Yes, the third.
1 wish cabs didn’t always smell so of ammonia.
I don’t see why they don’t try some sort of per-
fume.
There now!
What on earth’s the matter ? For goodness’ sake !
I knew you wouldn’t remember to remind me.
I was going to if you’d given me time.
It’s about that claret-coloured velvet like you used
for little Etta’s coat. Where did you get it ?
At Semple and Faulkner’s. But it was a remnant.
Dear me, I hope they have some more in !
You can go and see.
I’ll stop there after the cemetery.
I’ll go with you. I want to look for some dotted
Swiss to make up for little Herman.
I hope they won’t be too long at the cemetery, or
Semple and Faulkner’s will be closed.
There comes the casket now.
Don't forget, Etta. You promised to invite me
to meet Mr. Krantz.
No, Irma, I won’t. How about to-morrow night ?
I forget . . . does Bryan play euchre ?
He does. . . .
206
LET'S GO TO HINKY-DINK’S - A
SENTIMENTAL STORY
I t was five in the afternoon when John Champion
came into the Ritz out of the hot white spaces of
the Place Vend6me and met his grandson George.
The boy had just emerged from the bar, and the
old man fancied that he moved unsteadily ; but it
may only have been his fancy, for he was worried
about the boy. As he watched him making his way
through the crowd, he thought, ‘Perhaps I am an
old fusscat. . . . Times have changed !’
But he called to George as he passed and said
gently, ‘You don’t think you’re going it a bit hard,
do you, George ?’
The boy laughed. He was like the tall bent old
man in so many ways. They had the same bright
blue eyes, the same straight nose. Both of them were
handsome. It was as if in looking at the pair, one saw
only the old man, John Champion, in two periods
of his long, rich life, as a man past seventy and as a
boy of twenty.
‘Oh, I’m all right, Gramp,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry
about me. We carry our liquor well in these days.
We have to, drinking so much hard stuff.’
z 07
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
He spoke with a swaggering air of contempt for a
generation which knew not gin. Gramp belonged to
a generation which had drunk only good Burgundies
and champagne and Rhine wines.
The old man laid a gentle hand on his grandson's
shoulder. ‘I don’t mind your enjoying yourself.
Young fellows must work off steam. ... I was
thinking of Betty. You mustn’t make a spectacle
of yourself before your sister.’
'Oh, Betty !’ said George, and laughed again, as if
the women of his day, and certainly his own sister
Betty, knew how to look out for themselves.
John Champion frowned a little and asked, ‘D’you
think you could look out for her to-night } Because,
I’m feeling tired, more tired than usual. ... I
think I’ll dine in my room and give up the theatre.
Could you manage ?’
‘Trust us. I'll run along and tell Betty.’
‘Of course, you may keep the theatre tickets.
There are three of them. You might ask a friend.’
‘Sure, Gramp. We’ll find someone. There are
lots of people we know, running about in Paris. I’ll
tell her.’ He turned and looked sharply at the old
man. ‘You aren’t sick or anything ?’
‘No ; just tired.’
And the boy was swallowed up in the cheap crowd
that thronged the corridors, hot and over-dressed,
208
LET'S GO TO HINKY-DINK’S
hurried and harassed, many painted and decayed.
It was a throng that spoke a dozen tongues, but
more frequently than any other English or American,
the rich twanging American that one could recog-
nise everywhere, piercing the murmur of conversa-
tion like the sound of a motor-horn, or the flat,
monotonous English that wore persistently through
all the clamour like the ceaseless pounding of a flat
wheel. The door of the bar opened and a trembling
wave of confused chatter flooded into the hallway.
Americans . . . most of them . . . drinking to
make up for lost time. At home . . . prohibition.
John Champion turned away, sighed and moved
toward the lift. Times had changed. ... He kept
thinking of himself as a boy of twenty in the Paris
of fifty years ago.
)
In his room he sat for a long time looking out at
the gay little garden, so bright, so pretty, so artificial,
so filled with hard, determinedly bright faces. Per-
haps, he thought, he was wrong<o worry about these
grandchildren of his. Perhaps, as people said, this
generation was able to look out for itself. But he was
disappointed, somehow in a fashion he could neither
define nor understand. He had brought them, as
soon as their school was over, tb Europe so that they
might see with his eyes this Paris which all his life he
209
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
had adored, loving it passionately while he moved
through its wide white squares, seeing it always in a
mirage of enchantment during the long years when
he was forced to be away from it. When good
Americans die, he thought, they go to Paris !
He smiled. Yes. Paris. . . . his Paris . . . would
make a good sort of heaven. Only now there was
something wrong. There was a vague, uneasy sense
of something spoiled which he could not drive from
his thoughts. He had imagined it so many times.
. . . How he would show George and Betty his
beloved Paris, as he had shown it to their mother
(God rest her soul) in the late ’Nineties, how he
would make them see it with his eyes as a magic
place for enjoyment. It would be almost like being
young once more, almost like coming upon the en-
chanted city as he had done so long ago. (It was
nearly fifty years now. In those days the streets had
been lighted by the soft flare of gaslights.)
But the reality had not followed the pattern of
his imagination. He had not succeeded in making
George and Betty see it with his eyes. Somehow they
had found a Paris of their own which existed in a
blaze of light with motor racing tearing at top speed.
Their Paris was a city in which they kept meeting
friends like themselves, the girls self-reliant and a
little boisterous like Betty, the boys sometimes a little
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LET’S GO TO HINKY-DINK’S
. . . well, a little as George had been as he came
from the bar a little while before. It was a Paris filled
with Americans, where there was no quiet solitude
and everything was done in crowds. But perhaps it
was not altogether their fault. One must be gener-
ous.
‘It is hard,’ thought John Champion, ‘to imagine
being so young again and so full of life.’
And perhaps it was not their fault that they could
not see the Paris he adored. Somehow at times he
himself found it very difficult. Perhaps it had gone.
Surely the crowd that swept in and out of the doors
into the Place Venddme was not the Paris he had
known. It seemed overrun, and vulgar, and cheap,
and noisy. Those faces below himi there in the
garden . . . cracked and hard. There was nothing
romantic or picturesque about them.
And presently the old gentleman rose and turned
on the water in his bath. When he had bathed, he
put on dean linen and dressed slowly and carefully,
not at all like a man who planned to have dinner alone
in his room. And when he had finished, he stood for
a moment looking at the tall, spare reflection of a man
who had done his duty in the world, a man who was
wealthy, and distinguished - in short, a gentleman
of taste.
And at last he took up from the dressing-table a
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AWAKE AND REHEARSE
key with a tag attached to it bearing the legend
‘Agence Wolff. Numero - Boulevard Haussmann*
and thrust it carefully into his pocket. The long
soft summer twilight of Paris (that was one thing
that could not change) had begun to descend before
he put on his top hat, a little on one side in a rakish
manner, and walked out of his room. He was a very
handsome man, and completely a man of the world,
that which perhaps his grandson would never be.
A sitting-room separated the room of John
Champion from that occupied by his granddaughter.
When young George knocked on the door and came
in unsteadily, his sister met him in a kimono. She
resembled her brother and her grandfather, but
was darker than either, with big brown eyes that
would have been lovely if they had not been so
alert and restless.
Said George, ‘The old boy is not going out to-
night. He feels seedy. So we can throw a proper
party.’
‘Gramp is all right, isn’t he ?’ she asked. ‘He’s
not ill or anything ?’
‘No; he’s just tired. He’s an old man. You
can’t expect him to keep up with us.’
Betty lit a cigarette. ‘What are the tickets for ?’
‘The Com£die Fran^aise.’
‘And the play ?’
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LET’S GO TO HINKY-DINK’S
‘Something or other by Victor Hugo. . . . Ruy
Bias , I think. We don’t want to see it. ... I had
enough of that bird in school. . . .’
‘We could give the tickets away.’
‘Who to ? Nobody we know wants to spend an
evening in cold storage.’
George thought for a moment, hazily. ‘Well,’
he said at last, with a triumphant air, ‘we can throw
them away !’
A light came into Betty’s eyes. ‘We could see some-
thing snappy . . . the new revue with Spindly.'
‘But Gramp will ask us about the play at the
Com^die.’
‘We can tell him about it just the same. . . .
We can say we forgot to bring home the pro-
gramme. . . .’
‘Yes,’ said George. ‘That can be done. . . . We
mustn’t hurt his feelings. He’s sentimental about
Paris and things like the Com£die.’
George took the three tickets from his pocket,
tore them across, and flung them into the waste-
paper basket. ‘I’ll have to hustle out and get
tickets. And while I’m gone you can call up some-
one and fix up a party . . . the Spencers. They're
always out for a good time.’
‘Right-o,’ said Betty. ‘Bui hurry and get the
tickets. We’ve got to hurry.'
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AWAKE AND REHEARSE
George disappeared and Betty, cigarette in one
hand, took up the telephone.
*Saxe 8472. . . . Oui . . . 8472.’ Her French was
not beautiful, but vigorous and efficient.
‘I want to speak to Mrs. Spencer. . . . She’s not
in ? Mr. Spencer will do. . . . Hello. . . . Hello.
... Is that you, Harry ? This is Betty. George
and I are throwing a party. Gramp is staying in
to-night and we want you and Helen . . . Oh, you
must come ! . . . You can throw them over. . . .
They’re past thirty . . . middle-aged. . . . Never
mind Helen. Just call them up and say she’s not
feeling well. . . . Please, Harry, don’t spoil our
fun ! It’s our one evening free. . . . [Then, in a
soft cooing voice ] Listen, Harry, I’ll devote myself
to you. We’ll lose George and Helen and I’ll do
whatever you say. . . . You will ? . . . Grand !
. . . Stop for us here and we’ll dine at the Madrid.
George is getting tickets for Spinelly. ... In half
an hour. . . . Good-bye.’
As John Champion stepped into the Place Ven-
dome, he waved aside the waiting taxicabs. It was
a gentle evening, cooler now that over the garden
of the Tuileries the blue shadows had begun to
settle. He felt less weary. Somehow, as the evening
came down over the city, his old Paris seemed for
a moment to take form in the shadows and approach,
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LET’S GO TO HINKY-DINK’S
mirage-like, enticing him on ; bat it never came
near enough to be touched or to assume a solid
reality. The lights were too brilliant, the sound of
motor-horns too ear-splitting, the echo of American
voices too clear in his ear. He stopped for a moment
to stare at a countrywoman, hard, handsome,
superbly dressed, stepping from an Hispano-Suiza
with two men on the box.
‘They dress better than the French women them-
selves,’ he thought, ‘but there is something lacking
. . . some feminine quality, some softness . . .
piquancy, perhaps . . . allure. The effect is not
the same.’
Through the twilight he walked on until he
turned into the long arcade of the Rue de Rivoli.
Here, with all the shops closed, it was less crowded.
Sometimes even a word of French came to the
ears ... a word of French which in these days
sounded strangely foreign in the very capital of
France. He smiled.
‘Some day,’ he thought, ‘the French will wake
up to discover that their capital is an American
city, and they’ll never know how it happened. . . .
Infiltration . . . that was what they called the
process during the war.’
He came to the end of the long blue gallery and
turned into the vast misty spaces of the Place de la
21 $
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Concorde. The motors dashed this way and that,
brushing his very body in their shrieking progress.
In a moment he was safe again on the other side
by the Crillon. Thence into the Rue du Faubourg
St. Honor6 ... an honourable street which has
lost little of its old beauty and dignity.
As he walked his hand kept touching the key in
his pocket with the label ‘Agence Wolff . . .
Numero - Boulevard Haussmann.’ His long hand-
some fingers caressed it softly and the touch com-
municated to the fine old head some memory, some
idea which caused him to smile as if that worn,
clumsy key had been the key to Paradise. It had
been easy to get from the Agency. He simply
told them that he was looking for an apartment.
They knew him . . . John Champion ... the
American lawyer. They trusted him because his
name was an honourable one, as well known in
Europe as in America.
He smiled again when he thought what great
luck it had been to 1 find the apartment empty and
looking for tenants. . . . Tenants ! Tenants ! How
many of them had there been in that apartment
since he had lived there, a young man, in the days
when it was red and gold and new, a little vulgar
perhaps, but grand and spacious and touched by a
warm, sombre elegance ? How many tenants had
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LET’S GO TO HINKY-DINK’S
passed through its doors since the morning when
with a terrible sadness he turned the key . . . per-
haps this same clumsy worn key ... in the lock,
and so closed the door for ever on his youth, that
first bright youth with all its illusions and hopes
and anxieties . . . and love, too, a love which he
even now (a half-century afterward) respected and
cherished among his most precious secrets.
And now here he was, an old, old man walking
along the Rue du Faubourg St. Honor'd in the soft,
falling darkness in search of the youth on which he
had turned the key more than half a century ago.
At the Cafd Glaciere, he summoned the head
waiter, a shrewd man who recognised at once the
distinction and bearing of the old gentleman.
‘I want a dinner for two,’ said John Champion,
in the clearest, most exquisite French, ‘served in
my apartment on the second floor of Numero —
Boulevard Haussmann.’
‘And will you order, or shall I send you a fine
dinner ?’
‘I will order. There is to be a lady,’ said John
Champion. ‘And I want the wine and the dishes
of which she is fond. She is a woman of taste.’
‘Certainly, M’sieur,’ echoed the head waiter, and
a twinkle came into his eye. A gentleman so old
. . . so distinguished ... so homme du tnonde.
217
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
So John Champion ordered the dinner. There
were delicacies of this sort and that, and two or
three fine wines, and once or twice he was inter-
rupted by the lift of the head waiter’s eyebrows
and the sound of his voice murmuring, ‘Ah, that !
. . . That, Monsieur, we have not had for a long
time. It is a dish that is almost forgotten. People
don’t care for food as they used to. But all the
same Andr6 - he’s our chef, Monsieur, will be glad
to oblige. It will make him feel that there is some
excuse for his art.’
So John Champion turned into the Boulevard
Haussmann and walked until he came to Numero — ,
and there he stood for a long time looking at the
front of the house. All the shutters were up, for
the tenants had gone out of Paris in the heat. It
was unchanged, remarkably unchanged, save that
the stone was worn now and weathered into a soft
old grey. And the trees had grown . . . prodi-
giously. Once they had been only small striplings
of trees, planted there according to the plan of
Baron Haussmann when he tore down old Paris
and raised the long white avenues.
The concierge, too, had changed. Fifty years
ago he had been a fat little old man who remembered
Napoleon and had been at Wagram. The concierge
who admitted John Champion was a gaunt old
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LET'S GO TO HINKY-DINK’S
woman with a moustache ... a peasant from
Normandy, to judge from her appearance.
‘It is a fine evening, Madame,’ said John Cham-
pion. ‘I have come to look at the apartment on the
second floor.’
*Ab, out , M’sieur. ... It has been empty for a
long time. No one keeps it for long.’
John Champion laughed. ‘Is it ghosts, Madame ?
For I am not afraid of ghosts. They run from me.’
The old woman with the moustache crossed her-
self. ‘Who knows ? ’ she replied with a shrug. ‘It
has been so always, as far back as anyone can re-
member. They say that at times the rooms smell
of violets. That’s all. I shouldn’t have told you,
M’sieur, but if I hadn’t the charwoman would have
told or the grocer’s boy. . . .*
‘The rooms smell of violets,’ murmured John
Champion. ‘That seems a pleasant ghost who
keeps the room always filled with flowers.’
‘Yes, Monsieur. I say it is nonsense.’
The old woman stood watching as he climbed
the stairs, and (as she said on the following morning
to the grocer’s boy), ‘The old gentleman seemed so
strong and well. At each step he seemed somehow to
grow younger.’ But she did not understand, of
course, that each step was bringing John Champion
nearer and nearer to that far-off youth.
tig
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
The worn clumsy key fitted easily into the lock,
so that John Champion, turning the handle of the
door, found himself suddenly, and with a little
shock, in a room filled with thick darkness. There
were little bars of silver where the light from the
street filtered through the shutters. He stood there
for a moment, hesitating to make a light of any
sort lest in some way the little drawing-room had
changed so that, after all, it would be a strange spot
that he would not know. But at length he took the
silver briquet from his pocket (he kept it in perfect
condition so that it always worked admirably) and
the spark, leaping from the flint to the little wick
saturated in alcohol, gave birth to a flame which
illuminated all the room. Out of the darkness
familiar chairs and tables emerged, here a picture,
there an expanse of heavy brocade curtains, drawn
now to shut out the light from the old-fashioned
flowered carpet. The flame struck a bit of crystal
in the chandelier and was splintered into a million
multicoloured rays* of light. It was an enchanted
place. Nothing had changed. It seemed to him
that the very chairs sat in the same places, waiting
to greet him as they had done years ago, when he
returned from the Comedie Franfaise on the night
they gave Ruy Bias.*
He walked across the little drawing-room and,
220
LET’S GO TO HINKY-DINK’S
opening the door painted with fading, delicate
flowers, stepped into the little bedroom. Here, too,
nothing had changed. Perhaps a chair or two had
replaced the old ones. Perhaps the brocade of the
canopy that hung over the gilt bed was new. He
could not be certain. It was difficult to remember
exactly. It was here in this little gilt bed, with the
great canopy of faint blue brocade, that she had
died, slowly, gently, as she had lived, with John-
Champion sitting at her side, her hand clinging to
his trustfully.
When at last he turned away, he closed the
flowered door gently behind him and held the flame
of the briquet high. There were no lights in the
place save only two or three partly burned candles,
left by the last tenant, in the Empire candelabra
before the tall mirror that surmounted the little
fireplace. One by one, thoughtfully, he lighted
these, and as each wick burst into flame it seemed
that the room became less ghostly and more alive.
The little yellow flames kindled* a light in the eyes
of the old, man. Holding the candelabra high above
his head, he pulled a gilt table into the middle of the
room and placed it in the centre. Then he drew
up a pair of gilt chairs, one on each side. She would
be arriving soon. Now, again, after half a century,
he went through the identical preparations. She
221
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
played only small parts at the Com£die, like the
page in Ruy Bias , for she was very young yet and
inexperienced, and so was able to leave early.
There was a knock at the door and John Champion,
starting suddenly, called out , ' Entrez /*
It was the waiter from the Glaciere, bearing a
great tray, and behind him a red-cheeked bus-boy
bearing another, somewhat smaller, with bottles of
wine on it.
‘Lay places for two,’ he said to the waiter. ‘Yes,
two . . . here on the gilt table. Mademoiselle has
not yet come in.’
Swiftly, silently, the waiter went about his busi-
ness while John Champion, tall and white-haired
against the heavy brocade curtains, stood watching.
The waiters had not changed ; they were the same
even to the moustaches. When the service had
finished, he said, ‘Now, you may go.’
‘Monsieur does not wish to be served ?’
‘No.’
When they had gone, John Champion approached
the table and slowly, with a fastidious elegance, he laid
out the hors-cP oeuvres varies which she had always
loved with an enthusiasm that was almost childish.
When he had done this, he seated himself opposite
the empty place and opened a bottle of wine, but
in the very midst of the action he halted suddenly
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LET’S GO TO HINKY-DINK’S
and looked about him, breathing in the air of the
faded, pleasant little room.
It was the odour of violets, distant and faint, but
unmistakable . . . the old, wood-like odour of the
great purple violets he had once bought, night after
night, from the flower-carts behind the Madelaine.
Terhaps,’ he thought, ‘it is my imagination
spurred by what the concierge told me.’
And he returned again to the business of opening
the wine. It was not until he had filled not only
one glass but two, that he sat quite still once more
and looked about him into the shadows. There
could be no doubt of it . . . there were violets
somewhere in the room . . . fresh, cool violets.
The scent was less faint now. It dime to him
clearly, as if someone had approached; and placed
the bouquet on the very table beside the wine-glass
that stood opposite him.
It was a little after seven when a motor, painted
red and very noisy in its approach, and driven by
a young man in tweeds beside a young woman
dressed in crimson wearing a tiny hat pulled over
her eyes, drew up to the door of the Ritz and was
hailed at once by George Champion and his sister
Betty with cries of delight. The young man and
the young woman had been married but a year,
22$
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
but the young woman made haste to spring from
the seat beside her husband and join young George
in the tonneau. Only Betty hesitated.
‘George,’ she asked, ‘you didn’t forget the flask ?’
Cries of reproach greeted her inquiry. ‘A flask !
In Paris ! ’
‘It’s for cocktails,’ protested Betty. ‘Here . . .
in Paris . . .’
‘Oh,* said Harry Spencer. *You’re still green in
Paris.’
Betty flushed because Harry made her seem young
and naive. ‘Well, you see we haven’t been out on
the Town. We’ve been going around with Gramp.
This is our first night on the loose.’
She climbed in beside Harry Spencer and with a
great roar the red motor hastened to get under
way, for it was blocking the progress of a dozen
similar motors in the business of picking up other
Americans setting out to ‘throw a regular party.’
They seemed all to be in parties, in crowds. No
one was setting out alone, quietly, though the
evening was turning blue and soft and seductive.
‘Great Scott ! it’s hot ! ’ exclaimed Betty. ‘I
haven’t been cool since I landed here. George
keeps cool by staying in the bar.*
The bright red fnotor swept through the boule-
vards like a hurricane, dodging buses, motors, and
224
LET’S GO TO HINKY-DINK’S
pedestrians. From the back seat Helen Spencer’s
voice, a little weary and jaded, sang out, ‘For
heaven’s sake, Harry, hurry up ! We’ll never get
back' from Madrid in time for the show . . .’ (and
then derisively) ‘I thought this car was supposed
to have speed !’
The houses, the gardens, the white squares,
faintly blue now in the descent of the evening,
swept past them in a blurred stream. No one saw
them, but, after all, as Harry Spencer said, ‘We
don’t come to Paris to look at old buildings.*
Betty turned in her seat. ‘Stop, Harry ! Wait
at least until the evening has begun.’ For Harry
Spencer had given her hand a violent squeeze.
‘But you promised me.’
The voice of George from the rear seat. ‘Where
shall we go after the play ?’
And then Helen Spencer, who had taken off
her hat and allowed her hair to flow In the wind,
answering him. ‘Oh, let’s go to Hinky-Dink’s. . . .
It’s the best jazz in Paris. . ... The nigger band
can’t be beat. . . . Besides, everyone we know
will be there. . . . It’s the only place anyone goes
nowadays. . . .’
Crowds . . . crowds . . . always in crowds.
«
Behind the shutters and the thick brocade of
225
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
the second floor at Numero - Boulevard Hauss-
mann, the candles burned lower and lower in the
midst of the dishes and wine-glasses on the little
gilt table. No sounds penetrated the thick curtains,
not even the sound of a noisy red motor that roared
wildly by on its way to the Bois de Boulogne and back
again on its way to the Bouffes Parisiennes.
The old man sat leaning back a little, with his
eyes partly closed, quietly, without making a sound.
The food -all those delicacies that had come in
from the Glaciere - lay untouched, turning cold
beneath the candlelight. His own wine-glass he
had emptied, but the one that stood opposite, next
to that bouquet of violets, so invisible, so fragrant,
so fresh and woodlike (as if his friend as she sat there
had placed them by her side), remained untouched.
John Champion leaned back in his gilt chair and
bowed his head. He felt very tired for some reason.
It seemed that he had been slipping back, back,
back across all the expanse of years until at length
he was overcome by a strange sensation of having
left this old, wear y body -of having, somehow,
stepped out of it and become young again, incredibly
young and ardent and handsome, a boy of twenty-
one in a claret-coloured waistcoat and a high collar,
who looked for all the world like young George. But
the strangest thing ... the thing which confused
226
LET’S GO TO HINKY-DINK’S
him and in a vague fashion filled him with alarm
. . . was the fact that he seemed to be watching
this boy who was himself. And the boy had been
joined now by a girl with fine black hair which she
wore drawn back into a little knot at the back of
her lovely neck, a girl who came in, her cheeks
bright with the flush that sometimes frightened him,
throwing back her cape to greet him with a slow,
tender smile as she stood there in her crinolines, her
bonnet fallen back with its ribbons caught about her
white throat. In one hand she carried a little muff
and a bouquet of violets. She was cool and lovely,
and on the fur of her tippet there were linle flecks of
snow which had not yet melted. She coughed
faintly, in a deprecating fashion, as if it troubled her
lest she should alarm him.
The old man stirred and spoke then for the first
time.
‘Irene,’ he said softly ; and again, *Ir£ne.’
It was midnight when Georgfc and Betty and the
Harry Spencers fought their way through the hot
crowd to a table at Hinky-Dink’s.
‘I won’t have any trouble,’ boasted Harry Spencer.
‘I knew Hinky-Dink when he was just a nigger
bartender in Harlem.’
And, sure enough, there before them stood
«7
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Hinky-Dink, an immense coal-black negro, showing
his expanse of white teeth in a broad grin at the
approach of Harry Spencer. Above the sound of
‘Red-Hot Mamma !’ blared out by a half-dozen
saxophones, the big negro led them to a little table
at one side, where they seated themselves, very hot
and a little deafened, with their backs touching the
backs of other Americans who sat squeezed into
the little room.
*Thi8 is the real stuff !’ screamed Helen Spencer
above the din. She shook her tousled blonde hair.
*1 guess George and Betty are seeing life for the
first time in Paris.’ Then she seized her husband
by the arm and shouted in his ear, ‘They ought to
meet Mazie. Go over and fetch her !’
So Harry Spencer, while the others ordered drinks
concocted of gin and whisky, went uncertainly
across the crowded floor and brought a mulatto girl
in a short skirt with a tail attached to emphasise
her resemblance to a monkey. She was introduced.
‘When are you gfiing to dance ?’ screamed Helen
Spencer.
'Right away . . . Miss . . . right away,’ said
the mulatto girl. ‘As soon as they turn down the
lights.’
The lights went down and Mazie, stepping into
the glow of a red calcium light, thrust out her
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LET’S GO TO HINKY-DINK’S
stomach and began to dance wildly, a barbaric dance
that revealed to the hot, tired crowd all the muscles
that lay beneath the satiny yellow skin. It was a
wild dance, born in the jungles and translated into
new figures and patterns through a whole century-
old corridor of bar-rooms and brothels.
Above the whine of the saxophones, Harry
Spencer leaned close to Betty and said, ‘Let’s go for
a ride. We can slip out now and tell George and
Helen we’ve gone for some air. They can get home
all right.’
There was a little struggle, for into the eyes of
Betty there had come a strange look of fright at
something which lay beyond her understanding. It
was a vague, nameless terror of the crowd and the
noise, the heat and the sight of the dancer’s bare
rippling skin. The negroes were shouting now,
urging Mazie into a frenzy of contortions. She was
frightened as if she had been caught by something
from which she could not escape.
‘You promised,’ said Harry Spencer.
And silently Betty rose and followed him through
the darkness into the street where the big red motor
stood waiting at the curb.
It was long after midnight when the motor turned
through the Porte Dauphine 2nd came at last to a
halt near the Grotto and Cascade. In the darkness
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AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Harry Spencer shut off the engine and, leaning
across, put his hand on her knee.
‘Don’t Harry ! Don’t. . . .’
‘Don’t what ? What do you mean ? ’
She allowed him to loss her, struggling not to
•how that it made her feel ill. ‘I don't like it . . .*
‘You promised me. You said, “I’ll devote myself
to you.” . . . You said, “I’ll do whatever you
want.” '
*1 can’t help it,’ said Betty. ... ‘I can’t. . . .
Besides, it’s wrong when we’ve just left Helen.’
Spencer laughed. ‘Don’t worry about that. You
needn’t think of her. . . . Why, she’s divorcing
me.’
‘But why, Harry ? . . . You’ve only been married
a little while.’
He laughed again. ‘She says we’re tired of each
other. . . . I’m leaving the hotel to-morrow.’ He
took her hand, suddenly. ‘No, don’t preach to me.
. . . Maybe, you’d marry me when I’m free again.
We might try. . .*.’ He laughed again, with a
slightly tipsy air. ‘There’s nothing like trying. . . .
And if you marry every time, why, it’s all right.
Nobody cares . . . nowadays. Come on. It won’t
matter. Nobody cares.’
But she was stubborn and frightened.*
LET’S GO TO HINKY-DINK’S
In her room at the Ritz, the girl did not sleep.
She lay awake, tossing and still frightened a little,
until the dawn came in across the little garden and
the sounds of a hot, overcrowded Paris began again
beneath the window. The shadow, the terror,
which had touched her suddenly in the midst of
that wild, obscene dance in the hot, crowded room
at Hinky-Dink’s would not be shaken off. It was
not to be driven away by trying to read, or by a
shower of cold water, or even by the breakfast and
the Paris Herald which arrived at length on a tray.
At ten o’clock, while she was dressing, there was
a knock at the door and George’s voice, tired and
rasping, came through the panelling. She fancied
for a moment that it carried an echo of her own
terror.
‘Let me in !’ he cried. ‘Let me in l*
She opened the door and George* looking white
and exhausted but doing his best to assume a manly
air, said, *I’ve had bad news !’
‘Is it about Gramp ?’
George nodded.
‘Is he dead 1’ (She was really frightened now.)
‘Yes . . . he’s dead.’
She made a sudden movement toward the door
leading into the sitting-room, and then half-fell
into the chair beside her.
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AWAKE AND REHEARSE
‘He’s not there,’ said George quietly. ‘He’s dead
in an apartment in the Boulevard Haussmann. He
didn’t dine alone in his room. He went out before
we left and he never came back.’
Betty began suddenly to cry hysterically. ‘I
knew it. ... I knew something had happened. I
knew it . . . last night while we were at Hinky-
Bink’s.’
So George put his arms about the thin shoulders
and kissed her with a sudden, unaccustomed,
brotherly affection. In the bright sunlight that
streamed in through the windows, he sat beside
her and told her the story.
‘It’s very queer,’ he said, looking very white and
sobered in the end. ‘No one knows why he ordered
dinner for two people. There was a place laid for
someone else, but whoever it was for didn’t come,
for the food wasn’t touched. At the Agence Wolff,
they said he asked for the key because he wanted to
rent an apartment. I can’t understand that. He
must have been a little childish. The candles were
burnt out and a waiter from the Glaciere found him
sitting upright in a gilt chair beside the bed. One
hand lay on the cover. The concierge said it looked
as if he had been holding the hand of someone who
was lying there . . ‘. very ill. Only there wasn't
anyone in the bed and there hadn’t been. And
232
LET’S GO TO HINKY-DINK’S
the apartment, they say, smells of violets, fresh
violets . . . but there aren’t violets anywhere . . .
not even in Paris ... in the middle of August.*
233
THE APOTHECARY
i
H e was a small, bent, ageless little man with a
scraggy black beard, and he lived and had his shop
in two rooms in the basement of an ancient tottering
house on the edge of that once worldly quarter, the
Faubourg St. Germain. It was on the edge of that,
part of Paris made fashionable for a second time by
Americans who were immensely rich or ‘artistic’ and
sometimes both. The house was not quite in the
quarter, for just at its back tottered rows of rookeries
which housed the poor of Montparnasse. It was
from these houses that the Apothecary drew the
less lucrative part of his trade. His shop was so
dark and so evil-smelling that only those who could
not afford the prices of the glittering brightly
lighted shops came to him for the things which an
apothecary usually carries in his stock. But besides
these things he was said also to sell strange mixtures
and nostrums for restoring the vigour, developing
the figure, and bringing husbands to young girls
without dots. He even had (it was said) a powder
which if burned while repeating the proper in-
*34
THE APOTHECARY
carnations had the power of suffocating an enemy
even though he were at the other side of the earth.
It was inown also in the proper quarters that he
sold drugs which had qualities more certain of their
effect. It was these powders and liquids that
attracted many ladies and gentlemen who seemed
strangely out of place in the little den beneath the
turn of the stairs in the house on the Rue Jacquinot.
He had been there always, as far back as any
citizen of the neighbourhood could remember. He
held an ancient lease which he refused to surrender
even after the dirty picturesqueness of the quarter
began to grow fashionable. He clung to it even
when the old house was renovated and had its
front redone like the face of an old harridan, by
the German Jew who owned it and had the shrewd-
ness to install baths and make it livable without
destroying its picturesqueness. The house and the
Apothecary were inseparable. Each, without the
other would have lost something of its character.
As you entered, you sometftnes caught a swift
glimpse of a dirty black beard from which gleamed
two small rat-like eyes - all seen dimly through the
shadows of the evil-smelling shop. Sometimes you
caught the queer green light of a second pair of
eyes. These were the eyes of the Apothecary’s cat,
a black, unfriendly animal.
235
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
There was no concierge in the house of the
Apothecary, because he himself, by virtue of that
unbreakable lease, occupied the quarters that should
have been those of a concierge, and so it was a
house in which you were quite free to do as you
pleased. There was no one to watch you leave or
enter, no one to see whom you brought to your
flat, no one to see what strange people paid you
visits. Because none of the fleeting tenants con-
sidered the Apothecary as human. No one ever
thought that he might watch what went on in the
house. He was only a gnome who lived underground
and was never seen after he put up his clumsy
shutters at the fall of night.
Because it was this sort of house, it came to
attract one by one persons whose mode of life, whose
intrigues and whose vices were not suited to the
prying eyes of a blackmailing concierge. The tenants
came and went, but the lack of permanency was
compensated by the price of the rent which the
proprietor was able "to demand for so discreet a
house. At one time there was on the top floor a
dark little man of Greek and English descent, who
wore five bracelets on his wrist, carried a malacca
stick, an Italian passport, and spent his time at
questionable caf6s in the quarter. Beneath him on
the second floor lived Lady Connie Cheviott, a
*36
THE APOTHECARY
thin, white young Englishwoman, daughter of an
earl, with dyed red hair and tired, opal eyes set
in a chiselled, thin hard face. And last of all, on
the first floor, just over the Apothecary, came Fannie
Sackville - boisterous, loud, good-natured Fannie.
People said, ‘Have you seen the absurd, ramshackle
house where Fannie has moved ?’ Because everyone
in Europe who was anyone knew Fannie. She was a
sort of queen in the cosmopolitan, shabby, slightly
tarnished world that moved through the corridors
of Ciro’s and the Ritz and went always in season
from Le Touquet to Deauville, to Biarritz, to
Monte Carlo, to the Lido, to Paris, and back again
over the same road. Fannie was the friend of grand
duchesses and exiled kings, of demi-mondaines and
soap manufacturers, bankrupt and bogus noblemen,
millionaires, and gigolos. Hers was a world in which
everyone was so rich or so poor that money had no
value. Most of the ladies had had their faces lifted.
And it was a world that glittered a good deal. There
seemed to be a great deal more in it than there
actually was.
Some said that Fannie was English in origin and
some that she was Irish, but a few people, a very
few, knew fragments of her career which if pieced
together showed an exciting fend adventurous pro-
gress by the rocky road of burlesque, vaudeville, the
237
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
theatre, comic opera and matrimony that began
in Little Rock, Arkansas, and reached its peak in
the house on the Rue Jacquinot. Fannie never
troubled to clear up certain phases of the rocky and
somewhat unhappy past upon which she had no
desire ever to touch, and mystery, she knew, had
its value. To her it was worth as much as Zizi’s
title of Grand Duke was to him. There had been
at least two husbands, one a sort of super-confidence
man who called himself an investment broker, and
the other was the Honourable Cecil Thomdyke,
who had married her in London. Both had long
since vanished from the horizon, one into an Ameri-
can penitentiary and the other into a British mad-
house. Her name, Fannie Sackville, had to do
with nothing save Fannie’s own powers of invention.
She had used it on the occasion of her solitary
appearance in opera in the r61e of Maddalena at
some third-rate watering-place in the Black Forest.
Long ago she had lost any pretensions to a singing
voice. The voice with which she spoke was coarse
and metallic, the voice of one who had always lived
hard and loudly and had drunk a good deal. One
day Fannie was rich and the next she had nothing
but debts, yet so great was her fame that there were
dressmakers and restaurateurs who considered it
good advertising to clothe and feed Fannie without
*38
THE APOTHECARY
any hope of payment. She always brought in her
train dukes and princesses with names that had been
glorious a century or two before and (what was of
much greater interest to tradesmen) millionaires in
chocolate, perfume or soap who brought their
mistresses. If the millionaire happened to be
American, he had, of course, married his mistress.
Fannie’s gifts were many. She was kind-hearted
when the circumstances were not too exacting,
generous, for she had no sense of money, witty, and
amusing. But the greatest of her gifts and the one
which brought her success and carried her through
the valleys of misfortune was an immense and over-
flowing vitality. So great was her zest for life that
she had enough left over to give a semblance of
life and a sparkle of gaiety to the tired, despairing,
bored world over which she reigned. For at least
ten years, since the beginning of the decay of Con-
tinental society, Fannie had been supplying vitality
and entertainment to a whole ruined world. She
supplied it now in Rome, now in Venice, now on
the Riviera, now at Deauville, but most of all in
Paris, for Paris was the capital of her strange mad
kingdom.
At fifty-five Fannie -the indefatigable Fannie
who was always the life of the party -had begun
to feel tired. There were days when she wanted
*39
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
passionately to lie in bed dozing and eating choco-
lates and reading cheap novels as she had done in
the far-off palmy days of her too exciting youth.
But for Fannie there was no rest. She knew that
if she rested even for a day, people would begin to
forget her, and if people forgot her she would be
faced only by poverty and old age. In her world
people thought only of themselves, living in a morbid
terror of boredom. They worked at having a good
time, and so nothing that they did gave them any
pleasure. It was Fannie who saved them the work
by planning everything. If she came to bore them,
her kingdom would cast her out as other kingdoms
had done to Zizi and Fifi and the other exiled kings
and dukes and princes of her circle. But without
a kingdom Fannie would, unlike Zizi and Fifi, have
no title filled with the glamour of the long past to
support her. It would simply be the end. And so
each day, like a sick and weary trooper, she had to
forget that she was old and sometimes suffered from
rheumatism, and, rising wearily, she would paint her
face and touch up her hair and do the agonising
exercises which kept her figure slender enough to
wring free gowns from great dressmakers. And a
little later in the day two beady eyes set in a mass
of tangled black hair Would see her passing through
the evil-smelling hallway, setting out to organise
240
THE APOTHECARY
dinners and fetes and expeditions to divert her wan,
tired kingdom.
The full sense of her great weariness swept over
her for the first time on the day she moved into the
tall ancient house in the Rue Jacquinot. She was
aware that something in the atmosphere of the place,
perhaps the ancient musty smell of a house that was
too old and should have been pulled down long ago,
oppressed her spirit. But even after the trouble and
confusion of moving there was no rest for her. She
lay down for a few moments and then had a bath
and dressed and went out to dinner at Armenon-
ville and then on to hear the niggers sing atHinky-
Dink’s. It was dawn when she returned and the
Apothecary was already on the pavement engaged in
taking down his clumsy shutters and 'washing the
pavement. It was the first time she had ever seen
him out of his black hole, and the sight of his
ancient bent figure and dirty beard and beady,
malicious eyes gave her a fright. She told herself that
it was because she was tired and because her vitality
was frightfully low at that hour of the morning.
But the image remained fixed in her memory.
It was a black, bent, dirty, crooked image with an
aura of evil, and it was the eyes which she remem-
bered best. They were beady, red-rimmed, and
filled with malice. They came to her sometimes
241
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
in the midst of the gayest evenings when she sat
telling risque stories at the Ritz or the Ambassadeurs
with a grand duke on her right and an automobile
king on her left. She never saw him again in the
light of day, but only his eyes peering out from the
darkness of his cave. It seemed to her that the eyes
knew all the long history which she had managed to
forget. Sometimes when she was very tired she
fancied that the eyes were accusing her of things
which no one but herself could possibly have known.
But she thought, ‘This is nonsense. I must not
... I dare not ... let my nerves get the better of
me. I, who had never had a nerve in my body.
Truly, I am strong as an ox.’
When the image would not go away, she tried to
destroy it by jesting at it. She had a way - the
way of people who live by their wits - of turning
adversity to jest and so to capital, and thus she
sought to make capital of the dirty little Apothecary.
When people asked her about the ancient and
picturesque house in which she had taken a flat,
she described it with a great deal of gusto and noisy
wit, always adding, 'But the best of all is the old
man, an apothecary, who lives in the cellar. He's
a real character. He’s been there forever, ever
since the house was built. Already he's three
centuries old.’
24a
THE APOTHECARY
But the very mention of him had, just the same,
a way of bringing with it a sickening cloud of de-
pression, which she would shake off with her great
vitality like a dog shaking water from his coat. In
Fannie’s consciousness the Apothecary came pre-
sently to occupy a place like that of the corpse at an
Egyptian banquet.
But among the grand dukes and harlots, profiteers
and gigolos, the Apothecary came to be a character.
People who had never seen him spoke of him as
Fannie’s Apothecary. Sometimes it seemed that
he, too, was present at the dinners at the Ritz or
Ciro’s.
At times when Fannie sat before 1 her mirror
painting her sagging face, her hand Would pause
and, fascinated by her own reflection, she would
find herself thinking, ‘That thing in the mirror is
Fannie Sackville - that battered, decaying, tired old
woman who was born Tessie Dunker, of Little Rock,
Arkansas.' And one by one all her past, her vices,
her betrayals, her sins, her extravagances, her follies,
would have a way of rising up out of the funeral
wrappings of forty years aud returning to her in a
horrid, fascinating procession. It was as if she
*43
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
saw them all for the first time, for she never thought
about herself one way or another, and it was only
when she was tired that such things happened.
But in the end she would always dab on a trifle
more rouge, and rise briskly from her dressing-table
saying to herself, ‘After all, I am Fannie Sackville.
Everybody has heard of me. My friends are the
Flower of Europe, the cream of Old World nobility.*
And to quiet her nerves she would recite to herself
such names as the Grand Duke’s and Lady Connie
Cheviott’s and the Princess de Vigne’s and the Duke
of Sebastiola’s. . . > The Flower of Europe was a
phrase which consoled her. She thought of it more
and more frequently, because it kept her from seeing
the eyes of the Apothecary. Tessie Dunker of
Little Rock seemed a long Way off, quite lost in a
haze of unreality.
3
And then one night she had a stroke of luck.
Entering the bar of Ciro’s she caught a sudden
glimpse of a dark young face. It troubled her for
a moment until that amazing memory which had
so much to do with her success, placed it. She knew
suddenly, in a quick' flash. It was Tony Sanders,
grandson of Old Burgess Sanders who had that affair
*44
THE APOTHECARY
with Merna Leavitt, last of the spear carriers. Tony,
her memory told her, was rich, perhaps too idle,
something of a ne’er-do-well, a sportsman, an ex-
cellent dancer. Her first thought was that he was
handsome and attractive and almost at once she
knew that she had a use for him. Lately she had
come to pounce upon anything that was young and
not tired. She could feed his youth to her tired
world. There were women with tired, sagging faces
who would adore him.
She did not think it out very clearly. She existed
by instincts and Hashes of intuition, and a flash
now told her that he was valuable.
So sweeping forward royally, with all her jewels
a-glitter, she went up to him, crying out in the
hoarse hearty voice that concealed so much weari-
ness, ‘Why, Tony Sanders ! Why didn’t you let me
know you were in Paris !’
The boy looked at her for a moment puzzled,
and then said quite casually, ‘Oh, hello, Fannie,’
and took her hand.
Really they knew each other scarcely at all, but
with Fannie one always used first names. At once
she said, ‘I’m dining with the Duke of Sebastiola’s
party. You must join us.’ Then she mentioned
the names, the high-soundiflg, once splendorous
names of dukes, princes, and marquises who were
24S
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
in the party. There were also a gentleman of
dubious repute suspected of having been a spy
during the war, a decayed demi-mondairie married
to her lover, and a man who had made a fortune out
of patented cheese. These she neglected to mention,
although she did touch lightly upon the fact that
a movie actress of a certain notoriety was also a
guest. She was a trifle cautious because she believed
that Tony knew his Europe.
‘But I can’t,’ said Tony. ‘You see, I’m dining
with a friend of mine, a girl. I’m showing her the
sights of Paris. She hasn’t been here since she was
twelve.’
The bright, hard look glittered in Fannie’s eyes.
‘Why, bring her, of course. I’m sure we can arrange it.’
Tony asked her if she would join him in a cocktail
and then murmured that he was afraid the plan
wouldn’t work. He even blushed a little. ‘You
see, I don’t think she’d be at home at such a party.
She’s only twenty . . . a jeune filled
‘There’s no such thing.’
‘Perhaps not.’ He did not seem inclined to argue
the point.
For a moment something - perhaps the phrase
‘only twenty’ or the words jeune fiUe - gave her a
bad turn. She saw, tbo, that he did know his world
and that the Flower of Europe had failed to impress
246
THE APOTHECARY
him. Her figure wilted a little, and then recovering
herself quickly, she said, ‘I understand. Well, you
must join us soon at another party. Where are you
staying ?’
He wrote his address on a card and she in turn
gave him the address of the house in the Rue
Jacquinot. ‘You must come and see me some day.
Just ring me up. I live in the most fascinating
house. No concierge. In the basement there’s only
an apothecary, but don’t disturb him when you
come in. He’s a little cracked. I must tell you
about him sometime. I must go now. Zizi is
calling me.’
With a trill of bright professional laughter she
crossed the bar to where the Grand Duke stood
beckoning to her. Zizi was a Grand Duke whom
Tessie Dunker called by a pet name. Tony, looking
after her, saw her surrounded and swallowed up and
then appear again at a table filled with faces which
made him utter a sound of disgust and ask the
barman for another martini.
At the same moment the girl he had been awaiting
came through the revolving door. She seemed to
have been wafted in by a fresh breeze out of the Rue
Daunou and for a moment she stood in the doorway
a little dazzled by the glitter of lights. She was tall
and blonde and young. Her eyes were blue and
*47
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
had a look of wonder in them as if she were always
being surprised by the world. Yet there was a
curious air of self-confidence and dignity about her.
Against the gilt and glass she seemed shockingly
fresh and young. The hard light did not shatter
her smooth face into wrinkles and hard angles. When
she saw Tony she dismissed the maid who had
come with her and moved forward to meet him.
There are at Ciro’s two rooms. One is right and
one is wrong. The right room is crowded with the
fashionable, the notorious, the freakish, the bankrupt.
It is small and people sit huddled back to back in
order to squeeze into it. There are people who
will not be seen at Ciro’s unless they can be in the
right room. The wrong room is comfortably filled
with nonentities. Whole careers have been ruined
by being seen in the wrong room.
Tony, like the Duke of Sebastiola, had a table in
the right room. Tony’s table was for two and the
Duke of Sebastiola’s was the largest and most
resplendent in the room, but Fannie had neglected
to tell Tony that the flowers and the wines and the
food were paid for by the wife of the patent cheese
millionaire. Fannie had arranged it. The Duke of
Sebastiola was giving a dinner in honour of the
wife of the cheese merchant. At least, so it would
read in to-morrow’s Herald.
248
THE APOTHECARY
The two tables were near to each other and
Fannie kept watching the young people as if they
had for her a special fascination. There was some-
thing spidery in her behaviour. She pointed them
out to the Duke of Sebastiola, a lean, sallow man,
with a tiny moustache and long collapsible hands.
He took a great interest in them.
‘They are very young and fresh,’ he said. ‘I wonder
how long they’ll continue to be so ? You must
arrange to have me meet the girl, Fannie. She is
adorable.’
Before Tony and the girl left, Fannie swept to
their table.
‘Tony dear,’ she said, ‘I’m giving a party on
Saturday. You must come.’
Again he refused, but he introduced the girl.
Her name was Anne Masterson, and Fannie’s brain
at once set to work.
‘What a lovely name, my dear I Are you a
relation of the Westbury Mastersons ?’
‘Yes,’ said the girl ; ‘Tom Masterson is my unde.’
‘Of course I know them all well,’ said Fannie,
with an irresistible cordiality. ‘It does make a
difference, doesn’t it ? Perhaps you can come to
my party.’
‘She can’t,’ said Tony. ‘We*re going to the same
dinner.’
249
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
For the first time Fannie’s claws showed ever so
little. She gave the boy a look which said, ‘You
needn't try to oppose me. You may regret it.
Don't forget who I am.’
Then with a sweet smile she said, ‘Well, another
time, perhaps.’ And bidding them good night she
went back to join the princes and demi-mondaines
who were going on to another ‘party.’
When she had gone, the girl said to Tony, ‘Why
did you do that ? We aren’t going to any dinner.’
‘Yes. You’re dining with me.’ •
‘You said you had an engagement.’
‘I haven’t any longer.'
‘Are you trying to protect me ?’ She stressed
the word ‘protect’ with a shadow of mockery.
‘Oh, I’m not afraid that any of them will try to
ruin you. They’re much too feeble for that. At
least, they won’t ruin you in the way you read
about in the newspapers.’
*I’m not a child, Tony. I’d like to know her.
I’ve heard about her always.’
'There’s nothing very bad about Fannie. She’s
the best of the lot. The trouble is that she’s never
done anything really wicked. It’s all such nonsense.'
*You’re being a prig.’
‘Perhaps.’ Again *he did not argue the point.
It was a way he had which at once fascinated and
250
THE APOTHECARY
exasperated the girl. He said he simply thought
that crowd silly and worthless*and not very savoury.
There was a silence and presently Anne said, *1
fed sorry for her.’
‘For who ?’
‘For Fannie Sackville.’
Tony laughed. ‘For Fannie Sackville! Great
heavens, why ?’
‘She’s old and tired.’
‘Why, Fannie’s never been tired in her life. She
daren’t risk being tired.’
‘I think that’s what is the matter.’
Again a silence and Tony asked with a smile,
‘Are you disappointed in her ?’
‘1 don’t know. I’d never thought about her. I
suppose I expected a beautiful and fascinating
adventuress.*
‘She wanted us to join her party.’
‘Why didn’t you ?’
‘I’ve told you why.’
‘Listen to me, Tony. I can.look out for myself.
I don’t want to be protected.*
*I’m sorry I’m giving you a boring evening.’
She leaned across the table and, smiling, touched
his hand. ‘You know that’s not true. Don’t be
a spoiled child.* •
*51
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
4
As Fannie left the restaurant she was talking and
laughing boisterously. She was being the life of
the party. And she ’ was thinking, ‘Masterson -
Anne Masterson - niece of Tom Masterson. Why,
she must be John Masterson’s daughter/
John Masterson was worth twenty millions and
the girl had no mother. And she was young and
beautiful . . . young . . . young . . . young. If
she married someone picked out by Fannie, someone
who needed money, then she could borrow money.
Perhaps she was just the one for Sebastiola. In any
case, she was beautiful and young . . . young.
5
Unlike Henry James’ Daisy Miller, Anne Master-
son had no scheming, vulgar mother. Instead, she
was attended by a refined and desiccated spinster
called Miss Van Si/ien, who for thirty years had
supported herself by acting as companion and
chaperone to young girls travelling abroad. The
grandfather of Miss Van Siden had not been like
Anne Masterson’s grandfather, a steel puddler who
amassed millions ; he had been a gentleman of old
New York living in a red brick house in Washington
252
THE APOTHECARY
Square upon the rents of the property about him
that had once been the Van Siden farm ; and even
in the Seventies was covered already with shops
and lodging-houses. Even Miss Van Siden could
remember as a little girl having seen the Duke of
Middelbottom (grandfather of Lady Connie Chev-
iott, who lived above the Apothecary) when he came
to stay with her grandfather. She remembered,
too, the visit of the Prince de Venterollo, cousin of
the Duke of Sebastiola. Miss Van Siden was proud
of her grandfather and of her name, because these
were the only things left her in which she might
honestly take pride. There was no longer any Van
Siden money, no longer any pictures, nor a house
in Washington Square, and no dukes visited the Van
Sidens. She often spoke of her grandfather to
console herself for her poverty, her unmarried state
(a kind of disgrace with her generation), and the
neglect of friends who had come to forget her as
she slipped down in the world. For Miss Van Siden,
like poor Daisy Miller, was a romantic. Titles im-
pressed her, quite swamping her in their glamour.
She was more of a romantic than Fannie Sackville,
because life had trained Fannie to be a realist and
even in the moments when Fannie reassured herself
by thinking of the Flower of Etfrope she was aware in
her deepest heart that the flower was somewhat
253
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
bedraggled and gone to seed. But, then, Miss Van
Siden was herself in a way like the Flower of Europe.
She fed upon the past because the present was un-
bearable and there seemed to be no future. In a
way Miss Van Siden and the Flower were simply
marking time until the end.
So when Miss Van Siden heard Tony Sanders
lightly and in his hard youthful way jeer at names
which had been sacred to her grandfather, it made
her feel a little sick. It was almost as if Tony in-
sulted her own grandfather. Even when he told
her that he knew many of them quite well and that
the lot of them together were not worth much to
the world, she did not believe him. She only set
him down as boisterous and vulgar and ill-bred.
That was one of Miss Van Siden’s defences against
a world which she could not understand and which
she abhorred. Between herself and Tony there was
a sort of implacable hatred and scorn, and because
she knew that he was in love with Anne Masterson
she did everything in her power to separate them.
It was because of Miss Van Siden that Tony chose
to meet Anne at Ciro’s instead of going to the
Crillon to fetch her. Against him Miss Van Siden
kept up a steady, relentless campaign of hints and
insinuations. She allhded delicately to his vulgarity,
his bad taste, his ungentlemanly exuberance, his
*54
THE APOTHECARY
wildness. The thin cords of her withered neck
stood out in indignation when Anne, watching her
poor flustered face and knowing that everything in
the world was against poor Miss Van Siden and every-
thing in the world was on the side of herself and Tony,
defended him with the cruel assurance of youth.
The oddest thing of all was that Fannie Sackville
and Miss Van Siden knew each other. It was an
acquaintance, but never a friendship, for a woman
like Fannie, even in her younger days, could never
have been anything but a thing of horror to Miss
Van Siden. Yet there had been a time fifteen years
earlier when Miss Van Siden, encountering Fannie
in the country in England, had accepted her as the
Honourable Mrs. Cecil Thorndyke. Fifteen years
had passed since the paths of the two women crossed,
and in those fifteen years it was difficult to say which
life had been the more barren or which woman the
more haggard and weary. Fannie suffered from
an excess of gaiety that was no longer gaiety but
only a sort of tiresome hardship, and Miss Van
Siden was weary from a life which never belonged
to herself but to others fresher, younger, gayer,
stronger than herself. The two women were born
to hate each other and in any struggle the simple
Miss Van Siden was certain to be a dupe for a sharp-
witted creature like Fannie.
2 55
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
So when Anne Masterson came in one afternoon
from the races at Auteuil, where she had been with
Tony, to say that Fannie Sackville was giving a
dinner in her honour, Miss Van Siden looked at her
with a kind of horror and said with the sweet smile
of a paid chaperone who is never certain how far
she may go without losing her post, *Oh, but you
can’t do that, my dear ! You can’t be seen in public
with a woman like Mrs. Thorndyke (she refused to
call Fannie by the name Fannie had chosen for
herself). Your father wouldn’t think of it !’
And Anne, who seemed for some reason flushed
and angry, said, ‘It’s not to be in a restaurant. It’s
to be in her own house and she’s invited the most
charming and respectable people. I’m not a child.
Miss Van Siden.’
‘Is young Mr. Sanders going with you?’
‘No.’
There was a silence and Miss Van Siden said
sweetly, ‘I thought Mr. Sanders was coming back to
tea.’
‘He’s not coming. We quarrelled.’
A light came into Miss Van Siden’s eyes and she
turned away, lest Anne should see it. ‘That’s too
bad,’ she said falsely.
Anne flung down her silver fox. ‘I’m tired of
Tony’s moral tone. He’s always saying I mustn’t do
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this or that. I mustn’t be friendly with so-and-so,
“They’re not the right sort for a girl like you.” ’
She turned abruptly. ‘I’m not a child. 1 didn’t
come over here to get a husband and I didn’t come
to spend my time in the Louvre like a school-girl.
I did all that when I was twelve. I came over to see
Europe and have a good time, and Fannie Sackville’s
crowd is very much a part of Europe. They’re one
of the sights of our time. It’s like going to see the
ruins of the Coliseum. Besides, plenty of people
would be only too flattered to be invited by Fannie
Sackville. She’s very kind to me, poor old thing, and
I can’t slap her in the face for that. Besides, I fed
sorry for her.’ She wanted to say, ‘And I fed sorry
for you, too, who are so afraid of everything.’
Miss Van Siden listened in silence, haying dedded
perhaps from long experience that it wis useless to
argue with a headstrong young girl fresh from a
quarrel with her lover. She only said, ‘Just the
same, I’m against your going.’
Anne only looked at her scornfully and Miss Van
Siden poured herself a cup of weak tea. It gave her
an odd, unsteady feeling to find herself suddenly
ranged side by side with the exuberant Tony who
had no respect for great names. Miss Van Siden was
no matchmaker. On the contrary, there lay deep
down in her withered heart a bitter envy for creatures
* *57
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
as young and radiant as Anne Masterson. She hated
all these young girls whom she was hired to protect
by the shadow of respectability. She wanted, de-
spite her knowledge that it was a wicked thing, to see
all other women turn from fresh young girls into
withered copies of herself. The idea made her own
condition a less dreary and lonely one. In a strange
and terrifying fashion her heart leapt at the know-
ledge that Anne had quarrelled with Tony. But
she was ashamed, too.
6
On the other side of the wall Fannie Sackville
had been spinning her web in a kind of desperation.
Lately she had noticed that her friends laughed less
heartily at her sallies and that they sometimes ap-
peared to look upon her plans of entertainment with
indifference and even boredom. For they, too, were
growing older. One by one the women who had
been famous beauties were collapsing into old age.
They no longer found amusing the jokes she made
of the house in which she lived and of the Apothecary
who occupied the basement. It was as if they
sensed her weariness, finding them out and adding
weight to their own. And the damp, mysterious
Apothecary seemed in a strange way to go about
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THE APOTHECARY
with her, imposing himself like a dreary fog upon all
the parties. He had ceased any longer to be an
eccentric, perhaps over-strained joke. He came
slowly to rise up before them all - the grand dukes
and cheese merchants, the marquises and the demi-
mondaines - in a kind of horrible reality.
So Fannie redoubled her efforts to capture Anne
Masterson. At the races she crossed the paddock to
speak to her. She smiled and waved to her in restau-
rants. She sent flowers to the Crillon where Anne
was staying. And she knew that the girl was flattered
because, in spite of everything, it meant some-
thing to have even a waning Fannie Sackville notice
you.
In the back of her plans was Toto, the Duke of
Sebastiola. This was the tall, sallow man of forty-
three, the last of his race, who lived precariously in
the midst of Fannie’s kingdom. He, like Miss Van
Siden, lived upon the glory of the past because the
present was unbearable and there was no future. He
dressed in a dapper Latin fashion with gaiters that
were too yellow and waistcoats that were too bright
and jackets that were too pinched at the waist. In
some restaurants he was, like Fannie, able to eat
without paying because the proprietor recognised
his value in attracting tourists und buyers. He had
neither brain nor wit and his vitality had long ago
259
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
sunk to a low ebb from which it had never risen ’to
cover the rocks of adversity. He made a great show
of being a gallant toward all women, but in reality
he had nothing to do with them and from feebleness
lived quite a moral life. Work he could not con-
sider, for no Sebastiola had ever worked at construct-
ing anything. From the twelfth to the nineteenth
century the family had lived by pilfering and de-
struction and petty warfare in troubled Italy, and
in its decline it had lived upon the labour of peasants
on estates won by a condottiere ancestor. By the
time the present Duke came of age there were no
longer even any estates. Since he could not break
with so distinguished and honourable a tradition he
played a great deal of bridge and sometimes made
designs for a great dressmaker who knew the value
of his name with the cocottes and recently rich. He
had two great assets - a glorious name and a thin,
cruel face.
He had marked Anne Masterson from the mo-
ment Fannie crossed the garish ‘right room ’ at Ciro’s
to speak to her. He told Fannie that he must meet
the girl and a little later when he and Fannie had
come to understand each other better, he let her
know that he could imagine marrying such a girl and
that if he married her or someone like her who had a
large fortune, he would see to it (when the Italian
260
THE APOTHECARY
law gave him control of her money) that Fannie
shouldn’t suffer for having helped him.
Being a shrewd woman with a long hard life
behind her, Fannie began to take stock of the ele-
ments which opposed her. She knew that Tony
Sanders did not like her and that he knew far too
much of the world to be dazzled by her, but she
knew, too, that she must pretend complete ignor-
ance of all such knowledge. She must always be
pleasant and outwardly as candid as a fresh breeze.
The girl must believe that she was one of Tony’s
oldest friends.
So at the races when Tony and Anne quarrelled,
she crossed the paddock and spoke to Tony as if
she had known him as a child on her knee. She
flattered the girl and said presently, ‘I’m going to
have a party soon. I think I’ll give it in your honour.
You must meet people and learn your way about.*
She did not name any day lest Tony, regarding
her blackly, should claim an earlier engagement for
them both. ‘I’ll write you, my dear, and fix the day
soon.’
And Anne, being irritated at Tony at that mo-
ment, said quickly, ‘I’d love to come. I’ll speak to
Miss Van Siden about it.’
At this Fannie’s large face beamed. ‘Not Miss
Lavinia Van Siden! Not really! Why, we know
261
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
each other well. We used to stay at the Duke ol
Middelbottom’s every autumn. ... I mean the
old Duke, dear Connie Cheviott’s grandfather.
Lavinia will understand. I’ll write her a note ex-
plaining that I’m having the Flower of Europe to
meet you.’
And suddenly Fannie was gone again, lost in the
crowd of mannequins, trainers, millionaires, jockeys
and concierges that filled the paddock. The quarrel
began in earnest.
Tony’s dark face grew angry. ‘You’re not really
going to a party given by that old hag !’
And into Anne’s blue eyes there came a calm,
dear, dangerous look which Tony knew well. ‘Of
course, I’m going. Why shouldn’t I ? That’s
what I came to Europe for. I think you’re a plain
snob.’
Again Tony did not argue. He only said, ‘Perhaps
I am,’ with a certain satisfaction.
It grew worse and worse and at last Tony said
wildly, ‘If you prefer that set of has-beens to my
company, maybe it’s better that I retire from the
field altogether. I’m sure you’ll have no difficulty
finding a husband among them. Any of ’em would
be only too glad to marry you.*
‘Perhaps you’re ri|ht. Certainly I don’t want to
marry a man who treats me as a half-witted child.
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THE APOTHECARY
Besides, if they’re all so terrible how do you come to
know them so well ?*
Tony answered a second time with the same quiet
satisfaction. ‘With a man it’s different. A man can
look out for himself.’
It was quite the wrong argument. Anne looked at
him with fury. ‘That’s what all men say. But it
isn’t different any more. If you don’t know that,
we’d better part now. Will you get me a taxicab ?’
Yet she knew somehow that Tony was right. He
could take or leave the Flower of Europe without
harm. It was that which angered her most.
7
But Fannie was much too clever to risk a meeting
with Miss Van Siden. When she had said in the
paddock, ‘I must see her,’ she meant, ‘I must not
see her,’ and then retired to watch Anne and Tony
from a distance, knowing that she had caused them
to quarrel. She was a sentimental woman and once
she would have regretted what she had done, but
now she had to think of herself. The time was grow-
ing short and it was her own game she had to play.
She did know Miss Van Siden and she knew exactly
the vulnerable spot in the shabby old spinster. So
on the morning after the races, with the eyes of the
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AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Apothecary haunting her more dreadfully than usual,
she wrote a note and sent flowers to Miss Van Siden.
They arrived at the Crillon in the evening after
dinner while Anne sat reading in a corner of the
room and Miss Van Siden wrote one of her endless
letters in a fine Victorian hand to an obscure cousin
who lived up the Hudson. Miss Van Siden was
aware that Anne had been weeping and in her
withered heart there were short quick spasms of
pleasure which she tried shamefully to strangle.
She knew that the tears had to do with Tony and
that was enough to give her satisfaction.
Anne had been weeping because the hotel room
was dreary, with only the bloodless Miss Van Siden
in it for companionship, and because of a note which
lay concealed in the pages of her book. It read simply
‘I’m sorry if I was rude yesterday. I’ve been think-
ing it over and have come to the conclusion that per-
haps you’re right. We’d better not see each other
again. Of course you won’t want to go to the theatre
with me, so I’m sending the tickets in case you want
to take Miss Van Siden in my place. I hope you’ll
enjoy yourself at Fannie’s party. But, as you say,
times have changed, and in these days it is the women
who always know best. They seem convinced that
they are able to change even God and Nature's
plans. I hope you’ll enjoy the rest of your stay
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THE APOTHECARY
in Paris. Certainly Fannie can show you things I
couldn’t and wouldn’t. -Tony*
She wept because she thought she had lost him
and because the letter was shrewdly written to give
her as much regret as possible. Did he imagine that
she could even think of sitting in a hot, smelly,
airless French theatre with Miss Van Siden at her
side instead of him f She wept, too, because half
an hour earlier she had humbled her pride and sent
a message to him at his hotel, only to receive the
answer that he had gone away. They did not know
where, perhaps to Deauville. She wept, too, be-
cause Tony had done what she thought he never
would do. He had taken her at her word and given
her up. She felt very sorry for herself. Her whole
trip to Europe had been ruined because Tony chose
to be pig-headed. And now there was nothing to do
about it. She did not even know where he was. She
had better not have come to Paris at all.
And presently she began to grow angry once more
because Tony had done what shfe never thought he
would do and because her own vanity was wounded.
Anger at Tony helped to heal these wounds.
Then the bell rang and a boy brought a note and
some flowers. Anne watched Miss Van Siden read
the note slowly, once and then again, and she
watched her expression soften and a light come into
265
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
the dull near-sighted eyes. Anne knew the look. It
came into the eyes of Miss Van Siden at the mention
of royalty.
It was the poison of Fannie doing its work.
Miss Van Siden turned in her gilt chair and took
off her pince-nez. ‘It’s from the Honourable Mrs.
Thorndyke,’ she said, ‘asking you to dinner. Was
this the dinner Tony objected to ?’ Anne noticed
that Miss Van Siden had been moved by something
in the letter. Mrs. Thorndyke had become the
Honourable Mrs. Thorndyke.
‘Yes.’
‘Tony is foolish. He’s a wild nonsensical boy
without respect.’ (In the withered heart a flame
of delight leapt up. Tony had been wrong, after all,
and she would no longer have to be on his side.
Perhaps Anne would be an old maid too.)
‘That’s what I told him,’ said Anne.
‘It’s a very distinguished party,’ continued Miss
Van Siden, turning the mauve pages of Fannie’s
innocent note. ‘I ‘don’t like the Honourable Mrs.
Thorndyke. She’s not the sort I was taught to
admire. But certainly the people she mentions
are the very best. There’s even the Grand Duke
Augustus. I should think it quite proper, even
distinguished.’
(New little plans began to squirm and stir in Miss
266
THE APOTHECARY
Van Siden’s nineteenth-century brain. Anne might
marry a great title.)
She put on her pince-nez and began to read the
note for a third time, peering closely at the mauve
paper. ‘She writes that she’s asked Lady Connie
Cheviott (that’s the daughter of the Duke of Middel-
bottom I spoke about the other day) and the Duke
of Sebastiola (his cousin, dear, once visited my grand-
father) and the Princesse de Vignes and the Grand
Duke and Mrs. Brodman.’ Turning, she looked over
the top of her pince-nez. ‘I’ve never heard of Mrs.
Brodman, but she must be all right to be included in
such a party. As the Honourable Mrs. Thorndyke
says, they represent the Flower of Europe.*
With a flush of pride Miss Van Siden read the last
drop of Fannie’s poison. ‘ “Of course,” Mrs. Thorn-
dyke writes, “you know all these? people well.
There’s no need of telling you who they are.” ’
It was that line which won the struggle for
Fannie. Miss Van Siden said brightly, ‘Would you
like to go, my dear ?’ .
‘Yes,’ said Anne in a wave of rage at Tony, at
Miss Van Siden, and at all the world, ‘I’ve meant to
all along.’
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AWAKE AND REHEARSE
8
A week before Fannie’s dinner party, the Apothe-
cary disappeared. When Fannie came down at
noon one day, his damp, dirty little shop was closed
and blind. The shutters were still up and the pave-
ment unwashed. There were no black peering eyes
to look out at her as she passed the door. The only
sign of life was the sound of the wretched black cat
crying inside the closed door.
Fannie’s heart leapt at the sight. She had come
to the superstitious belief that if only she could es-
cape those eyes everything would be all right and
she would feel as gay and tireless as ever. Perhaps,
she thought, he had gone for good. And that night
at the Ambassadeurs she announced that her friend
the Apothecary had disappeared. She was her old
self once more. She was the life of the party, carry-
ing it all on her own shoulders, and no one was
bored.
The next day the shop of the Apothecary remained
closed and the next day and the next. On the day
of the dinner Fannie asked the femme de menage who
cleaned the stairs what had become of him.
‘He has probably gone off to the country,’ said
the woman. ‘He has 'done it before.’
(Perhaps, thought Fannie, he has gone for good
268
THE APOTHECARY
and then I shan’t have to move out.) Because of late
Fannie had considered fleeing the house and the
Apothecary forever.
Fannie was the most colossal of gamblers and,
like all gamblers, she was an optimist, living always
in the expectancy that something would turn up.
Since the day more than thirty years earlier when
she had run away from Little Rock with a travelling
salesman who failed to marry her (a fact known to
none but Fannie) her life had been one colossal
game of baccara. Sometimes the cards turned against
her and sometimes for months and years she kept
winning and winning, until suddenly one day she
would lose the whole bank in a single venture and
have to begin all over again. She had the wild,
nervous superstitions of a gambler, and she now took
the disappearance of the Apothecary as the begin-
ning of a new and better turn in the wheel of her
fortunes. While he had stood there in his shop look-
ing over her shoulder while she played her game,
everything had gone wrong. She had grown old and
weary. She had lost money. She had come for the
sixth time close to bankruptcy, and bankruptcy at
fifty-five was not so simple an affair as it had been
at thirty.
But all that was changed *now. She was going
to win at last, and when she won, Sebastiola would
269
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
lay aside something out of Anne Masterson’s for-
tune for her (Fannie’s) old age. She knew she was
going to win on the next card. She had that old
clairvoyant sense of excitement which overcomes a
gambler the second before a great coup.
9
Night came and presently half-past nine. Fannie,
bathing and dressing and making up her face, sang
to herself snatches of the old songs she had sung
twenty years earlier in the music halls in Australia.
The apartment looked well all lighted by tall wax
candles bought from the religious shop opposite
Saint Sulpice. The guests began to arrive, stumbling
along the narrow, dimly lighted stairway worn for
centuries by the feet of lords and ladies, pimps and
prostitutes. Sebastiola arrived first, looking tired,
sallow and distinguished. He exchanged a look with
Fannie that was bright and almost hysterical, as if he,
too, felt himself on the verge of a colossal change of
fortune. Then the daughter of the Duke of Middel-
bottom, Lady Connie Cheviott, came down from
upstairs, looking very weary but very fascinating,
with her short dyed red hair, her marvellous white
skin and the weary eyes of a woman of sixty. ‘The
war,’ people used to say at Noxham on Tow, the seat
270
THE APOTHECARY
of her father, the Earl, ‘did poor Connie in.’ After
her arrived one of the guests whom Fannie had neg-
lected to mention in her note to Miss Van Siden.
He was a tall, emaciated, transparent young man
bom in that part of Chicago known as the Loop,
who had an immense success in Paris because he was
an expert dancer of the Charleston. He was known
as Jimmy Harris and he was rather like a ghost. He
carried in his wallet a soiled card announcing his
membership in the National Association of Vaude-
ville Artistes. His trousers were cut a trifle too
full and his jacket a trifle too pinched. His hair
glistened with unguents like the patent-leather of
his shoes.
And then the Princesse de Vignes, a big handsome
woman with shining black hair and a large evil mouth.
Where her money came from no one knew, but she
was extremely well known and always seen every-
where. She got her clothes free from the dressmaking
establishment that employed Sebastiola as a part-
time designer. And after her tjie ‘extraordinary Mrs.
Brodman,’ a heavy, sardonic Jewess of forty-five who
in third marriage was wife of an international banker.
She was fabulously rich and her diamonds and
emeralds were the only real ones in the room. On
her wrist she wore the famous octagonal emerald
from the collection of the Maharajah of Ganore.
*71
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
And then the Grand Duke who once owned estates
larger than Texas and now lived largely by borrowing
money in lots of fifty francs from an illegitimate
daughter who earned her living by running a Con-
cert Russe. His meals cost him nothing, for he was
always being invited by people like Fannie and Mrs.
Brodman. He was always everywhere in season and
went from gala to gala, always surrounded by the
same crowd. And after him, the Baroness Traut-
mann, a woman of fifty who was not a baroness at
all but a once famous beauty who in five marriages
had managed to amass a large fortune. Her face had
been renewed, not too well, for the operation left her
mouth quite puckered, as if she were always whistling
to herself. And then the Marquis de Gotha, a silly
fellow whose sinister face belied the dimness of his
wits ; and after him a young man called Senff, very
rich and quite infantile, who lived from day to
day on the glory of seeing his name appear in the
social columns of the Herald and the Daily Mail
surrounded or rather preceded by those of the Grand
Duke, Sebastiola, Lady Connie, Fannie and others.
The account of any party in Fannie’s set was likely
to end with the simple phrase ‘and Mr. Senff.’ He
was a young man who was renowned for his taste.
And last of all came Anne Masterson. She wore a
simple gown of white, becoming to her blonde hair,
272
THE APOTHECARY
and as she came into the room there was a perceptible
heightening of interest, as if among all the jewels, real
and false, and all the reputations, insipid or bad, she
possessed the only thing that was of value to them
all. It was like a breeze stirring the surface of a field
of wheat that was overripe and beginning to fall.
When the Duke of Sebastiola kissed her ringless
hand, he held it for a moment too long and looked
at her out of his weary, handsome eyes with a look
so warm, so tender and so admiring that her vanity
was touched. Tony, with his rough half-proprietory
way, was incapable of such a gesture. It did not
occur to her that this was what Tony called scorn-
fully the professional manner of Latin men. Stand-
ing rather shyly beneath the crystal chandelier in the
centre of Fannie's room, she was Klee a tall lily
freshly brought in from the garden.
Fannie, watching her with the secret part of her
brain which was always occupied with watching,
thought with a strange and unaccustomed burst of
pride, ‘Old Europe no longer produces anything'
so perfect as this - such beauty, such quiet charm,
such perfect clothes, a figure so slim, such beautiful
feet and ankles.’ She fancied that in the breast of
Toto Sebastiola something had been aroused that
was more profound than his*perpetual craving for
money. To a group so experienced and so weary
8 273
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Anne Masterson had a freshness and a virginity
which was the only exciting thing left in the world.
The guests were seated about the table in the
order of their rank, for Fannie knew about such
things. As she seated herself, all her false diamonds
glittered and threw off beams of cold shattered
light. She seemed a kind of firework done in cold
and non-igniting fire. In the back of her brain she
thought again how far she had come from Little
Rock and that it was an exciting world. For a mo-
ment she was no longer weary. Her luck had begun
to change. The Apothecary was gone.
Anne, seated between the Grand Duke and Se-
bastiola, was a little frightened and glad she had
come. She was not awed, like Fannie and Miss Van
Siden, by the array of titles, but by the thing which
awed her generation. She fancied that these people
were wicked and sophisticated. It never occurred
to her that some of them were sordid, like Lady
Connie, or merely trivial, like Mr. Senff, or pitiful,
like Mrs. Brodman, or merely ill and tired and hope-
less, like the Grand Duke.
Mrs. Brodman, watching Anne out of her soft
brown Jewish eyes, said sentimentally but with a
touch of malice, ‘You look, my dear, like a lily
planted between a pair of ancient cactuses.’
The dinner began in a bright hard burst of gaiety,
274
THE APOTHECARY
the conversation flowing now in French, now in
English, but mostly in English because English was
now the chic language and because the Grand Duke
preferred to speak it. The Princesse de Vignes even
affected a slight American accent. There was white
wine and red and at length champagne, quantities
of it, all served by two men whom Fannie had in for
the evening at forty francs apiece. (Forty francs, a
dollar and a half. One could never do that in New
York or London.) That was the reason why
Paris happened to be the capital of Fannie’s
kingdom.
The Grand Duke had turned to Anne and in the
dim light of the candles the sight of his face so close
to hers gave her a shock. He looked ill and his face
and head were shaped oddly like a skull. His skin
was green-white and under his eyes there were dark
shadows. He suffered from some disease that made
him tremble. His hand shook as he raised his glass
of champagne. As he talked to her, Anne was seized
by a sickening uneasiness, as it she were talking to a
man who was a little mad. ‘Mademoiselle,’ he said,
*1 drink to you as the only young person here. The
rest of us are all a thousand years old . . . even
Fannie, for all the noise she is making. We have all
been dead a century or more?’
He looked at Fannie, who, working her hardest
*75
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
to make the party a success, was shaking her diamonds
and telling the Marquis de Gotha a questionable
story on his favourite subject of perversion. She
knew in that part of her brain which was always
watching that the party had begun to sink. She
saw that they were slipping back into a morass of
weary boredom.
Anne, speaking uneasily, said to the Grand Duke,
Tm not really young. Girls in these days know
everything.’
‘Age, my dear girl, has nothing to do with years
or experience. One is young or one is not. Even age
does not make one old if one is young. You are
young,’ he added with a melancholy persistence.
‘You are at the beginning. The rest of us are at the
end. Fannie tries to save us, but she can’t. She,
too, is at the end.’
He went on talking with the same feverish in-
tensity, about repentance and death, and what came
after death, and Anne, aware of her excitement over
the strange group beneath Fannie’s lustre, could
no longer understand him. She tried to answer him,
and to keep up an intelligible conversation, but she
found herself groping about in a cloud. There was no
beginning and no end to what he said.
At the end of the table Fannie was talking and
laughing too loudly. Near her the Princesse de
THE APOTHECARY
Vignes was talking in a low voice to the old and
mummy-like de Gotha. Sometimes in a brief still-
ness the rich Oriental voice of Mrs. Brodman was
heard like the accompaniment of cellos to a shrill
symphony written for clarionets, recounting the tale
of her pursuit of some priceless jewel or tapestry.
She had a passion for rich colours and velvety,
shining materials. Even these people about her
were a kind of collection she had made as she might
have collected objects of antiquity. The voice of
Lady Connie was like the sound of one piece of
copper struck against another.
Yet the singular enchantment seemed to grow
and increase, flowing and ebbing in waves like a
tremulous vapour. There was a sudden silence when
nervously all of them seemed to be waiting for some-
thing. And then slowly the enchantment appeared
to grow tangible, at first vaguely, and then with a
disturbing certainty. It was an enchantment that
one could smell.
Sebastiola said to Anne, ‘Dq you notice a strange
smell ? *
She could not be sure. Perhaps there was some-
thing.
‘It’s sickening/ He looked at the others and he
saw the lips of Mrs. Brodman saying, ‘Perhaps it’s
the drains.'
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AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Delicately he sniffed the air, and then Anne, too,
became aware of the smell. It was a faint, ghostly
odour, vaguely sweet and nauseating. It was a kind
of fear that you could smell. She was aware that on
her other side the hand of the Grand Duke was
shaking violently.
Across the table, in the green eyes of Lady Connie
Cheviott, there was a look of glittering malice. Of
them all she alone had the air of remaining aloof.
She might have been seated atop a glacier watching
the rest of them with a weary distaste. She ate
nothing and her long too-thin white arms rested
on the table. Her chair was pushed back a little, as if
she meant to rise and leave. In her flat, lifeless
English voice she was saying, ‘No, I do mean it.
There are people whom I would gladly poison if I
thought I shouldn’t be discovered.’
Mrs. Brodman, a little shocked, was saying, ‘You
don’t really mean that, Connie ?’ And an odd thing
happened. There was in her speech the faint echo
of a Yiddish-Cockney , accent, as if she were slipping
back to her beginnings.
‘Yes, people who bore me. There ought to be no
bores in the world.’
It was the Grand Duke who answered her. He
shook so violently that Anne was suddenly frightened.
Now even his voice trembled.
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THE APOTHECARY
*You don’t know what you’re saying, Connie.
You’re trying to be funny, but you’re only
childish.’
The Earl’s daughter continued in the same sinister,
metallic voice, ‘Oh, I don’t mean any harm. I
should put them away quite gently - without pain —
oh, quite. I shouldn’t be brutal or violent.’
Anne stopped eating and was aware that the
champagne had gone to her head. She wanted to
laugh or cry hysterically. The smell was nauseating.
She was aware, too, that a hand was pressing
her own gently beneath the table. It was a damp,
chilly, lean, aristocratic hand which she knew be-
longed to the Duke of Sebastiola. For a moment
she seemed unable to withdraw her own. She
thought, wildly, ‘What has happened to my nerves ?
I must not scream.’
She heard the others discussing in distant voices
ways of putting out of the world people who annoyed
them. They were making lists in a kind of futile pro-
scriptions, naming people from the corridors of
Ciro’s and the Ritz. There were small ripples of
macabre laughter. She wanted to speak in order not
to seem conspicuous, but she knew that whatever
she might say would sound young and fatuous. Two
others at the table had fallen silent. The one was the
Princesse de Vignes who had gone quite white, and
279
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
the other was the Grand Duke. He seemed stricken
with a ghastly chill.
Fannie was saying, ‘I should like to poison the
Apothecary.’
‘Oh,’ said Lady Connie, ‘but he’s gone forever.
He shan’t bother us any more.’
The sweets were served, but they remained un-
touched. Among the tulips and orchids (for which
Fannie had not yet paid) the candles burned lower
and lower. But no one ate anything. They said that
the rest of the dinner had been too good, or that they
dared not eat sweets because of their figures. The
talk of poisoning appeared to have terrified them.
And no one spoke of the dreadful smell; . . .
They seemed suspicious of each other, and again
through the cloud of dizziness it occurred to Anne
that they all hated each other with a consuming
hatred. The Earl’s daughter was watching the pale
Charleston dancer. The Marquis de Gotha was
staring coldly, with eyes like tiny marbles, at the
Princesse de Vignes. The Grand Duke had taken
a little phial from his pocket and was pouring green
drops into his glass of water.
Suddenly Madame de Vignes, looking at him,
laughed. ‘Zizi is saving us the trouble. He is re-
moving himself.’ She reached across with a long
spidery arm covered to the elbow with false dia-
280
THE APOTHECARY
monds and touched his hands. ‘You needn’t, Zizi,
dear. You’re not a bore ... at least, not yet.’
He drew away from her and said fiercely, ‘They’re
drops I take for my heart. I don’t think the conver-
sation is funny. It’s banal and stupid.’
And then sharply the smell rose again in a suffo-
cating wave, forcing them all into silence.
Fannie knew that the party had collapsed. Desper-
ately she rose and went to the piano at the end of the
room. It was a signal for Harris. She began to bang
wildly and loudly, ‘Yes, sir, that's my baby,' and the
Charleston dancer, his eyes bright with the light
of cocaine, sprang up and began to dance insanely.
The weary lids of the Grand Duke raised a little and
the green eyes watched the contortions for a moment
and then turned away, bored. The wild nigger
music filled the ancient house from the top floor
occupied by the sinister Monsieur Kouropolo to the
cellar where the Apothecary had once lived.
The dance ended, suddenly and awkwardly, in a
thick silence. Madame de Vjgnes made a pretence
at applause. Then the smell filled the room again
and Anne Masterson with her eyes closed heard a
woman’s voice cry out, ‘I’ve been robbed. . . .*
Opening her eyes, she saw Mrs. Brodman standing
in the middle of the room beneath the chandelier.
Her face was white and contorted. It had shrivdled
281
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
in anger into a white cabbage. It was no longer
Mrs. Brodman, hostess to the Flower of Europe, but
Rebecca Weiberger, daughter of a Soho pawnbroker,
who had been robbed by the goys. Those people in
the room were her ancient enemies, who patronised
and lived off her - the Princess de Vignes who owed
her a small fortune, the Grand Duke who had once
persecuted her own race, Lady Connie who had
stolen her lover.
The smell rose again in a sickening wave and the
twenty years’ hardness of Madame de Vignes
cracked and fell apart. She began to weep hys-
terically.
Fannie sprang forward to save the day. ‘It’s
only been lost, Mrs. Brodman.’
Mrs. Brodman looked at her. ‘I’m not a fool,’
she said.
‘But surely no one in this room would steal !’
Fannie appeared to have gone to pieces. She
stood now all red and coarsened under the harsh
light. And she had paid the one thing she never
should have said. In the silence the words seemed
to hang in the air, taking on the horrid green colour
of irony. They seemed to mean exactly the opposite
of what she had said.
There was a deep sigh from the Grand Duke.
The Marquis de Gotha tried to smile and only
282
THE APOTHECARY
succeeded in showing a row of unpleasant pointed
yellow teeth. The bracelets on his wrist tinkled
faintly. The Duke of Sebastiola had turned quite
grey, and Mr. Harris was twitching. Madame de
Vignes continued to weep wildly.
And then abruptly, with a melodramatic gesture,
the Earl’s daughter rose and, flinging her worn sable
scarf about her thin shoulders, she said in her
death-bed voice, ‘I’m leaving this filthy party. If
anyone tries to stop me, I’ll speak out. I know who
stole the emerald.’
For a moment it seemed that Fannie meant to
attack her. ‘You’re being nasty, Connie ... be-
cause you’re jealous of a man who won’t sleep with
you any longer. You’re a dirty, jealous slut ! You
ought to be ashamed of yourself !’
For a second the air crackled with the hatred, so
long confined, between the two women. Into the
green eyes of Lady Connie there came a cold glitter.
They were suddenly like the eyes of a snake, without
pity. ‘What use is shame to me ? Or to you,
Fannie, or to any of us for that matter ? Why speak
of shame in a room filled with people like us ?’
She moved toward the door, and then, as if she had
forgotten something, she turned sharply and said,
‘Your day is finished, Fannie. You might as well
throw up the sponge and go to the workhouse. If
283
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
you ever can get people to come to another dinner,
make certain the drains are in order. The smell is
horrible.' As she closed the door, she said, 'You
can all go to hell, as far as I’m concerned.'
For Anne the scene held a horrid and incredible
fascination. She saw that Fannie had turned deathly
white and looked ill. She knew that she was quite
white because the spots of rouge showed up suddenly
in hard red splotches. Fannie was saying to Mrs.
Brodman, ‘I’ll make myself responsible.’
The pawnbroker’s daughter laughed. ‘You make
yourself responsible ! You ! Can you pay for an
emerald that cost nine thousand pounds ? No, I
shall call in the police.’
‘The police ! In my house !’
‘You wouldn’t like that, would you V
‘With a dinner of such people. . . .’ Her voice
was suddenly weak. ‘. . . of such people,’ she
echoed, and the words seemed to mean something
quite different. The old consoling phrase came to
her lips. ‘The Flower of Europe !’
For a moment Mrs. Brodman was silent, as if
waiting again for the awful smell to corrode that
phrase ‘The Flower of Europe.’ Then she said,
‘Such distinguished people mightn’t like the police
either . . . such people who put up with me for
what they can get from me, and sneer at me when
284
THE APOTHECARY
they’ve left my table. I want my emerald . . .
nothing else.’
And then she heard the sobs of Anne, half-stifled
by her handkerchief. ‘Let her go,’ said Mrs. Brod-
man. ‘She ought never to have come here. If
anyone else tries to leave the room I’ll have the
police on him.’ No one stirred. ‘None of you
wants to see the police. None of you wants a
scandal in the papers. It would be a fine one for the
pink ’uns.’
Fannie, gathering her bedraggled dignity about
her, crossed the room and putting an affectionate
arm about Anne led her toward the door. The
Duke of Sebastiola rose to follow them, but Mrs.
Brodman blocked his way.
‘You heard what I said, Toto.’
‘But she can’t go home alone.’
‘She’s safer alone than with you.’
He turned away meekly. The Marquis de Gotha,
jingling his bracelets, began to mutter about people
of low birth, but Mrs. Brodman was concerned only
with Fannie.
‘You’re not to cross the doorstep, Fannie . . .
not to put a foot over it.’
Fannie turned, obedient as a little child, but she
managed to whisper to Ann^ in a final flare-up of
invincible optimism, ‘I wouldn’t speak of this to
*8 5
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Miss Van Siden or anyone. There’s been a mistake.
Everything will be all right to-morrow.’
Again the smell rose and corroded the words with
irony. . . .
ii
At the end of the hall there was only a dim gas-
light, one of the landlord’s concessions to pictur-
esqueness and false antiquity. By its smoky glow
Anne, sobbing, and confused because she could not
say what it was that so terrified her, felt her way
along the damp mildewed walls, down the uneasy
curve of the stairs. A truck passed the old house
and caused it to creak and tremble. As she descended
the stairs she was aware that the disgusting smell
grew stronger and stronger. She felt that she was
suffocating and, nauseated, put her handkerchief
over her nose and mouth. Before her there was a
thin rim of light showing from the street beneath
the door. She had almost reached it when in the
darkness her foot struck something which gave off
a faint metallic ring. Then she slipped and fell
forward on her knees into a jagged tangle of thin
metal which set up a terrifying clatter. A door
opened at her side and the hall was bathed in dim
yellow light. She saw that she had fallen into a
286
THE APOTHECARY
funeral wreath of violets and roses made of painted
metal. The odour was suddenly overwhelming.
Above her a voice was saying, ‘Tiens, Mademoi-
selle. You haven’t hurt yourself ?’ It was a police-
man standing in the door of the Apothecary’s shop.
He had come, she knew, to arrest them all.
He helped her to her feet and brushed the dust
from her cloak, and then behind him she had a
glimpse of the Apothecary’s shop. On a wooden
table, with candles at the head and feet, lay the
swollen naked body of a man with a grey face and
a tangled black beard. An old woman, all in black,
was washing the body, and beyond her against the
rows of coloured bottles sat two other old women,
who appeared to be waiting. To Anne there came
suddenly the strange idea that they had been there
always, waiting.
The policeman was saying, ‘It is the Apothecary,
Mademoiselle. He died four days ago. They only
found him to-night.’
She knew what the smell was that corroded
Fannie’s party. It was the odour of death.
12
A little before dawn the flower of Europe left
Fannie’s flat. The Duke of Sebastiola had returned
287
AWAKE AND REHEARSE
Rebecca Brodman’s emerald and so there had been
no scandal. But Fannie’s joke about the Apothecary
was at an end. In his dirty little shop the candles
burned until the grey light of dawn stealing through
the shutters revealed him lying in the midst of
his strange things, watched over by the three old
women who had appeared out of nowhere. And
above-stairs Fannie, looking at herself in the mirror,
knew now that the Apothecary had never gone away
at all. He had been waiting there all the while.
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